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ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS AND THEORY

Our current environmental crisis cannot be solved by technological
innovation alone. The premise of this series is that the environmental chal-
lenges we face today are, at their root, political crises involving political values.

Growing public consciousness of the environmental crisis and its human
and nonhuman impacts exemplified by the worldwide urgency and political
activity- associated with the consequences of climate change make it impera-
tive to study and achieve a sustainable and socially just society.

The series collects, extends, and develops ideas from the burgeoning
empirical and normative scholarship spanning many disciplines with a global
perspective. It addresses the need for social change from the hegemonic, con-
sumer capitalist society in order to realize environmental sustainability and
social justice.

The series editor is Joel Jay Kassiola, Professor of Political Science at San
Francisco State University.

China's Environmental Crisis: Domestic and Global Political Impacts and
Responses

Edited by Joel Jay Kassiola and Sujian Guo

Ecology and Revolution: Global Crisis and the Political Challenge
By Carl E. Boggs

Democratic Ideals and the Politicization of Mature: IJje Roving Life of a Feral
Citizen

By Nick Garside

Chinese Environmental Governance: Dynamics, Challenges, and Prospects in a
Changing Society'

Edited by Bingqiang Ren and Huisheng Shou

Ecology, Soils, and the Left: An Eco-Social Approach
By Salvatore Engel-Di Alauro

ology, Soils, and the Left
An Eco-Social Approach

Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro

palgrave

macmillan

ECOLOGY, SOILS, AND THE LEET
Copyright © SaJvatore Engel-Di Mauro, 2014.

First published in 2014 bv
PALGRAVE MACMnjLAN*

in the United States— a division of St. Martin's Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NT 10010.

Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the
World, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers
Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above
companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.

Palgrave 5 and Macmillan 8 are registered trademarks in the United
States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN: 978-1-137-35821-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Engel-Di Mauro, Salvatore.

Ecology, soils, and the Left : an ecosocial approach / by Salvatore
Engel-Di Mauro.

pages cm. — ( Environmental science and theory)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-137-35821-9 (alk. paper)

1. Soil degradation— Social aspects. 2. Soil degradation— Political
aspects. 3. Soils. 4. Environmental protection — Social aspects.
5. Environmental protection — Political aspects. I. Title.
S623.E54 2014

333.95-dc23 2013047377
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Integra Software Services
First edition: May 2014

10 987654321

Contents

List of Illustrations v ii

Series Editor's Foreword {\

Pre race X \

Acknowledgments X vii

1 Muted Everyday Disasters 1

2 Soils and Their Classification: Ecological Processes and

Social Struggles 13

3 Soil Properties and the Political Aspects of Soil Quality 35

4 Soil Degradation: Overview and Critique 59

5 Capitalism-Friendly Explanations of Soil Degradation 97

6 Leftist Alternatives and Failures 123

7 Toward an Eco-Social x\pproach to Environmental
Degradation 163

Notes 177

Bibliography 189

Index 225

Series Editor's Foreword

The Outcome of a Non-reductionist Ecosocial Inquiry: Advocating for a
Political Soil Science and a Biophysical Leftist Critique of Capitalism

Soil science, as any other endeavor aiming to produce knowledge,
cannot be regarded as independeyit of the social context in which
it develops. Yet this is precisely how scientific or technical knowledge
continues to be understood.

— Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro, Ecology, Soils, and the Left,

Chapter 2

There is... little prospect in social theory for explaining how
capitalist practices impact soils without learning about soils
themselves. . . biophysical processes like soils are still too often treated
as indistinguishable, unchanging backdrops in the explanatory
frameworks of leftist scholarship.

— Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro, Ecology, Soils, and the Left,

Chapter 6

As the Environmental Politics and Theory Series editor, it is my plea-
sure and honor to introduce readers to a new book in the series.
Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro's path-breaking volume, Ecology, Soils, and
the Left: An Eco-social Approach, is the fifth addition in this excit-
ing young series. There are two comprehensive collections of studies
of the globally significant problem of China's environmental crisis,
and two innovative reflections on ecology and revolution, plus a feral
theory of democracy and society (see the series's previous publica-
tions list). With Engel-Di Mauro's original and iconoclastic work that
insightfully critiques both the biophysical science of soils (pedology)
and leftist objections to capitalist society, the series has begun to ful-
fill its important mission to "collect, extend, and develop ideas from
the burgeoning empirical and normative scholarship spanning many
disciplines with a global perspective" (see series's mission statement).

Ecology, Soils, and the Left exemplifies this goal of the series with
its prescribed "eco-social" approach by advocating the integration of

xii

Series Editor's Foreword

or mostly unconsciously) the essential roles capitalism and the socio-
political play in the assumed value-neutral scientific studies of the
nature of soils, their quality and degradation. For example, "industri-
alized capital-intensive farming and the social system on which it rests"
are assumed without critical scrutiny when soil quality improvement
actions are being contemplated (Chapter 3):

[T]hc eco-social context of soil scientists is as important as the soil quality
indicators measured. An end to a pretense of neutrality would be of scientific
and wider social benefit, so as to promote an open discussion on political
positions (e.g. about land use), the scope of science and the role of scientists
relative to the state and the rest of society, among many other unspoken, yet
underlying issues

Ultimately, the issue of soil quality is a "social problem" ....

(Chapter 3)

Also, leftist criticisms of capitalism omit (again, rarely consciously) the
scientifically known qualities of soils, treating them as "backdrops"
(see Chapter 6) to the leftists' arguments (if they are even considered
at all).

All students of the environment and politics should take note of
Engel-Di Mauro's insights regarding the methodological and epis-
temological errors of false dichotomy and resulting reductionism.
These errors undermine our thinking, not just the research of sci-
entists who study soils. The value of Ecology, Soils, and the Left
is in its sweeping applicability. Environmental scientists must take
into consideration the unavoidable, normative socio-political aspects
of their study. They should not presume a socially isolated world
of nature/the environment/soils characteristic of conventional sci-
entific research. Socio-political factors must be made explicit and
defended with reasoned evidence; this point is central to all scientific
inquiry.

Engel-Di Mauro provides many illustrations of how soil scientists
make basic methodological socio-political errors, exemplified by the
definition of "marginal land," throughout the book. Similarly, the
author argues that leftist critics who object to the environmentally
deleterious impacts of capitalism — now worldwide under the tenets of
neoliberalism— need to fill a huge gap in their socio-political studies
with fuller biophysical understanding. Here the quote in Chapter 6
is most apt: "There is little prospect in social theory for explaining
how capitalistic practices impact soils without learning about soils
themselves".

Series Editor's Foreword

xiii

Engel-Di Mauro proposes an inclusive and self-consciously com-
plex combination of ecological science and socio-political analyses.
He advises an eco-social approach to understanding environmental
degradation in general and soil degradation in particular by outlining
a general social theory of soil degradation and capitalist social relations
in the final chapter of his work (Chapter 7). Researchers must con-
duct biophysical and social analyses simultaneously because the two
are mutually constitutive; this ecosocial message of Engel-Di Mauro's
book is expressed in a fundamental point made by Marx: "that peo-
ple are part of nature and dialectically related to it in a differentiated
unity" (Chapter 7).

What I have come to recognize as the fundamental cause of the
global environmental crisis becomes abundantly clear in Engel-Di
Mauro's Ecology, Soils, and the Left, and is, therefore, for me, a core
teaching: the false and deleterious alienation of humankind from the
biophysical environment. Throughout his book, the author shows
instances where: (1) the scientific study of soils (or nature, in gen-
eral) is conducted as if humans are unrelated to soils/nature, leading
to pedological reductionism, and (2) leftist assessments of capitalist
societv are conducted as if capitalism and its social relations are inde-
pendent of the natural world. These errors of separatist reductionism
undermine both kinds of inquiries.

Engel-Di Mauro's text admirably identifies this common error in
mainstream research of both fields. It also points the way to its
remedy: the reconnection and the complexification of the natural
and the social so that they constitute a more accurate whole. This
requires the combined study of empirical (soil) science and social
(political) analyses, an eco-social conceptualization: wherein the social
is natural — humans and human society are a part of nature, not
disconnected from it — and the natural is social — knowledge about
nature, like all knowledge, "cannot be regarded as independent ot
the social context in which it develops" (see Chapter 2)— as Foucault
has importantly taught us.

I close with a reference to a recent book that complements
Engel-Di Mauro's path-breaking work perfectly because it also iden-
tifies the root cause of our current environmental crisis as the
misplaced estrangement of humankind from nature requiring an
"antidote . . . [that] challenges us to see Earth, each other, and our-
selves with new eyes — the eyes of interdependence." 2 The author
of the text quotes a reference to this separation from nature as
a "wound." 3 Engel-Di Mauro's bold book proposes a diagnosis —
reductionist separation — of this pernicious "wound" that has caused

xiv

Series Editor's Foreword

so much harm to our planet and its living inhabitants, and prescribes
treatment in the form of inclusive and expansive eco-social inter-
relationships. For this significant accomplishment, we are much in
nis debt.

Joel Jay Kassiola

Preface

Any interest in studying biophysical process meets mostly with
disinterest among leftists. Yet some of the major figures in leftist
movements have been, for example, physical geographers (e.g., Elisee
Reclus, Pyotr Kropotkin), physicists and/or mathematicians (e.g.,
Sofia Kovalevskaya, Cheikh Anta Diop), agronomists (e.g., Amilcar
Cabral), paleontologists (e.g., Stephen Jay Gould), and physicians
(e.g., Ernesto Che Guavara). At the same time, the biophysical sci-
ences are rife with politics, the kind of politics that does not get
acknowledged as politics and even somehow passes for objectivity. The
biophysical sciences tend to be the sort of capitalism-friendly, classist,
patriarchal, Eurocentric, racialized milieu that arguably makes many
leftists want to leave or puts them off for good. Or at least it makes it
understandable why so few leftists are attracted by biophysical science
work. But, in spite of it all, there do exist biophysical scientists who
are sympathetic if not leftist themselves. In fact it is, thanks to the likes
of Ken Hewitt, David Schwartzman, Richard Levins, Judith Carney,
Susannah' Hecht, Michael Stocking, Fred Magdoff, Miguel Altieri,
and Richard Lewontin that I have found inspiration to persist in the
study of soils. It is a veritable shame that their role, contributions, and
potential are so under-appreciated within the left.

The current situation is a most dismal one, one that undermines
future possibilities for an egalitarian alternative to prevail. A revolution
simply cannot be built by focusing only on organizing people, devising
novel social theories, or studying what happens in society', although all
such activity is fundamentally necessary. One cannot count on tech-
nocrats or scientists bound to liberal democratic outlooks for help
in making a new society happen, especially when there is little to no
awareness among most biophysical scientists about capitalist processes
and certainly even less appreciation for the highly destructive nature of
a capitalist mode of production. The biophysical sciences are instead
replete with ready-made facile explanations for social horrors and envi-
ronmental harms and with recipes to alleviate or resolve them that are
aimed at finding all the culprits in the world except the ones with the
most influence.

xvi

Preface

So n is out of long-standing enchantment and disappointment witi
he biophysical sciences and the left that this book has come about
I "? 0 " 3 lo "8 time to figure out how to combine a fascina-
tion with soils with a commitment to struggles for egalitarianism The
process continues to be arduous, constantly threatened bv reduction- 1
istic traps, and the hope is that the reader will approach the book in
that hght. It can also be overwhelming to attempt to keep up with I
nod theory, critical empirical work on social processes, theories on
biophysical dynamics, and the vast empirical work on soils. There are
certainty few incentives to do so, institutionally and in anv of the vari-
ous strands of the left. But it seems that without an adequate grasp

talk'of ° P f' Cal I 0 '' 11 "' thC Practical Skills ir can enablef any
proven T ? °n T'f ^ VaCU ° US ' Bio P h ™"l scientists have
proven histoncally to be largely subservient to the ruling regime of
the day (and sometimes emphatically aligned with the ruling classes)
It must become for the left a priority to develop supportive frame]

deuces' TW * u *?* ^ in the bio Phvsical

Wl t ? ld Uke thc form of informal institutions, indepen-
dently established and managed grassroots infrastructure such as soil
and water analysis labs, and research agendas that explicitly meld polit-
.ca commitment with biophysical scientific work without collapsing '

zationr ; 0thCr K EVen h3Ving timC dcdlCated ™ hln lefti * o^ni g
zanons to discuss the issue, to educate one another in one or another

to share and dcvcl °p such faowic ^ - d

hem from 5* ^r' ^ ^ ^ SC ™^ derating

them from the capitalist grip, and channel them toward much more
socially sensitized and responsible ends. If this book contributes evel

^ists;^ achieving such objcctivcs ' * h -

Saed

Xcu Pfalz, in thc Land of the Sepus

Acknowledgments

This work is a confluence of numerous conversations and discussions,
at times surging with serendipitous chance occurrences. It is an effort
that has involved the direct and indirect contributions of a very large
number of people. Inevitably, I will fail to thank everyone who has
helped me along the way and so I hope they will accept my apolo-
gies. First and foremost, I am profusely thankful to Deborah and Ezra
Engel-Di Mauro, whose support and encouragement enabled me to
have the time and to sustain the mental aptitude to research and write
and, thanks to their prompting, to find more appropriate and clearer
ways of expressing myself. Similarly, I am indebted to my mother,
Graziella Menconi Di Mauro, and to Harold Engel, with whom I have
shared innumerable conversations on leftist topics. Many thanks go to
Pierpaolo Mudu for always finding a way to talk me through things
and discern the positive in this and other endeavors.

I am very much grateful for the welcoming atmosphere, the
patience, and the encouragement of Scarlet Neath, Brian O'Connor,
and Robyn Curtis at Palgrave Macmillan. Without them, of course,
this book would not have been possible at all. Discussions among
comrades at Capitalism Nature Socialism have also been pivotal to
developing many of the ideas expressed herein. In this, I would like to
recognize especially Paul Bartlett, Leigh Brownhill, John Clark, David
Correia, Maarten DeKadt, Nik Heynen, Joel Kovel, Mazen Labban,
George Martin, Ariel Salleh, David Schwartzman, Erik Swyngedouw,
and Eddie Yuen. John Clark, Nik Heynen, and Ben Wisner in par-
ticular have been a tremendous force in facilitating this project's
fruition through their enthusiastic support. Many others have like-
wise contributed through insights, critiques, and suggestions, even
if sometimes unknowingly. Among them are Harald Bauder, Hugo
Blanco Galdos, David Butz, Karanja Carroll, Sutapa Chattopadhyay,
Kanya D'Almeida, Daryl Dagesse, Sandor Hajdu, Ken Hewitt, Sandor
Kurucz, Jenna Loyd, Attila Melegh, Paola Migliorini, Paul Robbins,
Flavio Valdimir Rodriguez, Quincy Saul, Daniel Tanuro, and Kalman
Voros. Equally important has been Peter Wissoker, who, while at

xviii

Acknowledgments

Cornell University Press in 2006, originally solicited my work on
Gavin Bridge's recommendation and continued to be supportive
despite my glacial writing pace. The manuscript has undergone many
transformations since the first set of ideas that launched the endeavor,
but without that initial push, this volume would simplv not have come
about. I must also give credit to Rick Schroeder, who eons ago advised
me to pay particular attention to Piers Blaikie's 1985 volume, which
is cited quite often in this work and has been a decisive earlv influence
on me. As demonstrated by the many people contributing in one way
or another to the making of this book, writing is a collective process
and I find myself in the good fortune of being situated in the midst of
a braided flow of insights.

Chapter i

Muted Everyday Disasters

A. most subtle scourge is menacing the world, the sort that threatens
and deceives all at once. This is the scourge of soil degradation.
Its sheer existence undermines many lives, yet it is tough to dis-
cern, shrouded as it is in tales of untold scarcities and dissembled
as it is by a fog of recycled scarecrows. This shrouding and dissem-
bling, the politics of soil degradation, is what amplifies the subtlety of
its often gradual and nearly imperceptible nature. Yet the ambiguity
belies its menacing power, which is juxtaposed with actually existing or
potential devastation, with imponderables effaced by sensationalism.
Paradoxically, many of those decrying both the inadequate attention
to soils and their degradation contribute to perpetuating what they
decry, for they decry not the social relations of power that under-
gird the scourge. On the other hand, when it comes to soils, leftists 1
have been mostly on the inattentive camp or have borrowed uncriti-
cally from the scarecrow-mongers. Traversing the fog and deciphering
the tales requires research on biophysical processes, where leftists
rarely tread, and critical appraisal of research on biophysical processes,
where leftists have excelled. There are a number of incentives to
undergo this double task of research and critique of research. One
is to contribute to overcoming the reckless disinterest in and the over-
shadowing effects of scholarly fastidiousness over nuance and another
is to resist the corollaries of depoliticizing environmental sensational-
ism (like catastrophism or "peak soil") and technocratic scientism (like
blaming soil degradation on population growth).

The disinterest, though, seems the norm. For many in capitalist
societies, including most leftists, soil stimulates no particular reaction.
It may perhaps when it gets in the house, on our hands or clothes.

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

Then , t is usually referred to as dirt or as a state of being soiled. And
soiled is not usually something one aspires to become. Referring to
sou as dirt is perhaps unsurprising, given that large numbers of people
are now hardly steeped in direct contact with soils as previous gener-
ations were. What is interesting is that soil becomes dirt-a disruptor
o hygienic norms-precisely when it is detached from itself. Dirt is
also soil that is out of place, in the mainstream imaginarv. In this lav
or, more precisely, unsystematic understandings of dirt converge with
scientific ones about soil displacement, at least superficially. There is
awareness that something is wrong when soil is out of place'. Yet when
soil sticks to our bodies, clothes, or vehicles, the immediate reaction is
not usually about how the physical integritv of a soil has been affected
but about cleanliness.

This in itself is not necessarily a capitalist phenomenon, but it feeds
into ,t. The way soils are made perceptible to people invokes conno-
tations beyond something being dirty, out of place. A whole way of
lite is evoked by soils. Not so long ago, an overwhelming majority of
people survived or thrived by living off the land, which ,s often used
as a metonym for soil. Dependence on soils was a palpable, everyday
common experience, and remains so for a decreasing multitude world

even 'in "T^F ° f "* aS * S ° mCC ° f «■«««, remains,

even tf ess commonly acknowledged. But soil acquires negative svm-
bol c value when most people's economic prospects are removed from
ts Me-enabling contributions. Many leftists know this outcome all
too well as well as its social foundations, but are themselves largelv
distanced from many of our nonhuman sources of existence, like

even T^T^J TCp ° n ° n cities in Economist

even glorifies this historically socialized remoteness: "It was in the city
that man was liberated from the tyranny of the soil" (The Economist
^07, 4). In such a worldview, with its not so accidentally sexist lan-
foof ' °yl C ° n " eCtion L to soils ' standi "S ^ for the work of procuring
benefi S R • ' t"" ** ind haS been broken to bumanityl

exhibl; n ^;r PhCa u 0n 'i mnS fr ° m ^ SOil is like - ™seum

inH , r ln j the L arduous ' gtimy agrarian past, from which the
ndustrialized and urbanized have been freed. The hundreds ofmH
ons still living off the land deserve our pity and the utmost fro t
a heir emancipation. The other hundreds of millions eking out an

Den fi > t qUal ° r ° f mega " dtkS Sh ° uld be COnside -d the luckv

beneficiaries of the progress urbanization offers. Let us praise our sav-
■or the capitalist city! So perhaps it is because of its'connotations
of dirt and toil that soil is not a focus of much political fermen

Muted Everyday Disasters

worldwide, like global warming is or tropical rainforest destruction
used to be.

Extremists' delusions aside, our links to soils cannot be severed
w ithout compromising our existence. Soils, as intrinsic parts of largely
land-based ecosystems, provide us with the most basic means to sus-
tain ourselves, including the purification and cycling of major sources
of water. Every year, they enable the proliferation of all sorts of organ-
isms, many of them directly and indirectly crucial to our lives. 2 This
is besides establishing the conditions for the human production of
millions of tons of food and fiber. Most life on land would therefore
not even exist without soils and, indeed, neither would we. We all
depend on soils for our very survival because, at a minimum, we all
have to drink water and eat. And without functioning soils, those basic
resources are endangered. So, what a strange idea it is to celebrate
freedom from something without which we die. In the kind of soci-
ety in which I live, most people are so removed from the realities of
what sustains life that they can delude themselves into thinking about
freedom in terms of abandoning what we depend on. Such is the lived
disconnect — the alienation, as Marx famously put it — between peo-
ple in capitalist societies and key ecological processes from which they
draw sustenance.

There is, then, an inescapable biophysical necessity- that binds us to
soils. Our being rests on ensuring that soils contribute to our benefit,
like breathable air and drinkable water. But our ecologically contin-
gent being is always also a function of what happens in society. The
freedom alluded to by ideologues such as those represented in The
Economist is the sort of freedom that excludes most people. As Mies
and Shiva succinctly put it, "Freedom within the realm of necessity-
can be universalized to all; freedom from necessity can be available to
only a few" (Mies and Shiva 1993, 8; italics in original). The notion of
liberation from the tyranny of the soil is a worldview of the privileged,
those in a position to consume massive quantities of resources from
all over the planet, which means forcing most others in the world
to labor so that a few may reap the greatest benefits from the use
of soils. The privileged need not understand the necessary relation-
ship between people and soils, except superficially (as when using soil
erosion problems to kick people off the land) or when it matters to
maintaining their own privileges.

Soil degradation processes are therefore mostly quieted disasters
in present-day capitalist societies, but not catastrophic in the sense
envisaged in much environmentalist!!, and largely misconstrued by
soil scientists or experts with respect to their causation. 3 They are

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

subtle scourges not just because they are usually difficult to sense (bar-
ring phenomena like landslides), but also because they have become
socially downplayed if not altogether suppressed from the evervdav
f V, is outcome of social relations that enable some

to have the luxury of being unaware of soil degradation problems or
to have the power of dictating when soils are degraded. It is the same

ST ?f C ° mpdS man> ' t0 haVC n ° access to soils or to ^ils
carelessly These are, m other words, processes of alienation from soils
by way of a historical development of both concrete, if not compul-
sory distancing and ideological severance. Some soil scientists object
to attitudes represented in The Economist and see them as resulting
from detachment from nature.

Paradoxically, even as our dependence on the soil has increased, most of us

SSJSX?^ Cm0ti0naUy ***** from * peop^ n

of a it insula Tt T**"* ^ ^ ^ h the artificial -vLnment
Otactty, insulated from direct exposure to nature, and some city-bred children

5 ' aZeXV^ ° f «*« °« * -permarke s

^ t?^Z u lgn ° nnCe u ^ ° Ut ° fi 8 n0ranCe has ™™ the delusion
S nSen abOVC natUre and haS Set itsdf free * ««3

(Hillel 2008, 5)

If for the moment one can leave aside the in-itself alienating societv-
nature dichotomy in the notion of cities as "artificial environment -
there is m these words a potential convergence with Marx's insights
on capita fist alienation and therefore a possibility for critical fen
s.bility It is a possibility that is consistently dashed by scientists'
own ,deolo gl ca tenets and political commitments to objectix st sc -
o fb r ffi ;T a,ISmin tte face of oppressive social relations and
&e^ tt Sl i SaCn Tu Wh ° diSCCm ±C ecol ^ cal "^cussions of
who m 0t thC in which the v »ve are the same

who see only an undifferentiated humanity as the culprit even as

5 T Capab,£ of giving social differentia l g

developed" and "undeveloped" societies). Theirs is the self-exaltS

tec hnocratic fl.pside of the same privileged or cap.tafisucto d^
n the technocratic version, the experts are the heroes who will save

us ignorant masses from self-delusion and help save our "civilization"

enXstiffi: thrOCS I" 11 degradati ° n " hiS ™ "> find - -ci-
S -en mmimal understanding that such contradictions are

ffi ZTi rTrw h ° de ° f pr ° duction (if the >' are CTCn

wita that term). This depicts a state of affairs that finds its corol
lary within ,11-mformed leftist anti-capital.st movements and wntm^

Muted Everyday Disasters

as will be discussed. The quiet scourge is therefore not just a wider
social one. Real existing soil degradation problems may be made into
quiet catastrophes by social means (including within the anti-capitalist
left), but there is more to soil degradation than what happens in
society.

Much of what unfolds in soils is difficult to sense because it is inac-
cessible until one digs. The surface of a soil often does not represent
w hat goes on beneath, with the bustle of activities by innumerable
and largely still unidentified micro-organisms and the constant move-
ments and transformations, both gradual and immediate, of gases,
w ater, and materials. The problem of not sensing all this is not just
the result of detachment from nature, which is the only aspect most
concerned soil scientists seem willing to consider. What soil scientists
generally miss or fail to investigate (they are hardly alone in this) are
the historical and current social relations that make such detachment
possible and persistent — the forced expulsions of people from land on
which they subsist, with massacres and genocides, misogynistic and
racist violence, militarily forced displacement, colonization, and other
forms of coercion that reverberate across generations. This is what
fundamentally demarcates leftist analysis of soil degradation from that
of technocrats. There is, however, an unfortunate propensity on the
left to to cus on the social relations at the expense of what soil scien-
tists have excelled at studying, the soils themselves. Our interactions
with soils are also related to what soils are and the way they develop
independently of us. This latter aspect can be said of environmen-
tal degradation more broadly, since environmental change occurs also
independently of people.

Stated otherwise, soil degradation is comprised of combined eco-
logical processes, among which are social ones. They tend to be silent
as a consequence of processes that are both social (e.g., ideological
distancing) and biophysical (e.g., soil resilience). It is a tendency that
is disrupted every now and then by changes in soils that are destructive
to people. This can be illustrated by heavy metals contaminating crops
when some key soil characteristics (like pH) change, crop failures abet-
ted by declines in soil nutrient availability, or soil creep undermining
housing structures. Changes in society bring about other possibilities
to counter the tendency for soil degradation to be a quiet catastro-
phe. This happens when some organize their lives in ways that enable
heightened awareness, such as through the introduction and spread
of urban community gardens. It can also occur when ruling classes
pursue policies that raise business or state dependence on agricultural
exports. At such points, soil quality can even take center stage.

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

Soils, Human Impact, and Political Struggles

To illustrate the existence of the quiet (but occasionally and temporar
lly loud) scourge in the lived and imaginary worlds of capitalism, I do
not have to venture far and I dare say neither does the reader. The
town where I live is adorned by orchards, especially apple orchards
making for an inviting, seasonally verdant, and multicolored floral
landscape. But adornments can deceive. The orchards in this place
called New Paltz are the sort of managed woods that have been
doused for decades with chlorinated biocides and associated heavy
metals, leaving a long-lasting legacy of contamination of soils and
possibly water. Each time there is an initiative to build a shopping
mall, roadways, or housing complex, the specter of the past comes
alive with fears of mobilizing dormant poisons or of discovering a
life-menacing reality in what seems at first glance to be a safe, tran-
quil place (Heitzman, Smith, and Duffv 2011; Parisio et al 2009-
Steinberg 1995; Town of New Paltz 2010).

Recently, a large construction firm joined the local college admin-
istration to convince the local government to turn an old abandoned
orchard into a college residence. Town hall meetings were convened
to invite interested parties to voice concerns, as legally required, and
various technical impact assessment reports were made available to the
public. There is much at stake financially, for the construction com-
pany, the college administration, and the private consulting companies
hired for the assessments and building process. Emphasis is laid as
typical of such public displays of capitalist democracy, on the great
advantages that will be brought to students and facultv in securing
housing close to the college and on the environmental benefits of
reducing greenhouse gas emissions from car-dependent commuters
The problems of attracting more students, of housing availability, and
of air pollution are all happily met by a single project.

But dark forces lurk below ground. According to one of the con-
sulting firms' findings, the soil on which the residential area is to
be built retains worrisome levels of 4,4 DDT and dieldrin, as well
as high amounts of arsenic (Ecosystem Strategies, Inc. 2012). .Aside
from this, the overall assessment of the site was deemed positive with
reservations from a few local inhabitants and students, and in spite
of concerns raised by a hydrogeology consultant about groundwater
availability and quality (Miller Hvdrologic Incorporated 2012) A new
sewage treatment plant was part of the plan, even though one nearby
already exists, and more water would be pumped from municipal water
sources. The objections discussed were related to water supply and

Muted Everyday Disasters

treatment issues, impacts on other species, drains on local govern-
ment and property owners' finances (by way of payment of an amount
to be agreed with the local government in lieu of taxes), the exclusion
of poorer students who cannot afford the new lodging, among other
social and ecological effects.

The soil contamination aspect exemplifies the politics of environ-
mental issues. The moment one starts looking for and examine more
closely the different social and ecological aspects involved in soil
contamination, the clearer it is that it cannot be treated as solely a
technical issue, as implied in what in the United States is termed "envi-
ronmental impact assessment." In fact, the assessment, presented as a
technical report, was hiding some disconcerting assumptions about
w hat counts as relevant knowledge and even what kind of activities
should be allowed on the premises. The impact assessment consultants
biased the soil sampling toward minimum contaminant detectability,
excluded most heavy metals from lab analysis, selected less stringent
critical values for acceptable contaminant levels, and ignored some
basic dust dispersal issues.

The soil sampling procedure was limited to the first 6-8 cm of
depth and concentrated along the drip lines of the trees. This was
presented as standard procedure, but it is nevertheless a most curious
way of looking for information. Tree roots reach much greater depths
than that and so create tunnels for potential contaminant percolation
below the sampling depth. Trees are also sprayed with insecticides as
they grow so that what is currently the drip line does not reflect all the
drip lines of the past, as the tree was growing. Contaminant movement
is hardly confined to drip from the top of a canopy. Contaminants can
also descend along a tree stem and collect at the bottom of a tree, close
to the trunk. These avenues of movement for contaminant-bearing
water on and from trees and into soils are well known ( Pritchett and
Fisher 1987). Not only were entire areas systematically skipped from
sampling, but tests only included arsenic, lead, and mercury, leaving
out heavy metals like copper, which is often found in fungicides, often
featured in the panoply of agrochemicals applied in orchards.

In the interpretive part of the analysis, the consultants conveniently
omitted the much more stringent "Unrestricted XYSDEC SCO"
standards, opting instead to include only the Residential version. This
selectivity cannot but go unnoticed by the majority of locals, who
are unfamiliar with such documentation or how to interpret it. But
by using the critical limits set for residential land use, the consul-
tants effectively imposed a policy decision on what kinds of activities
would be permitted. For example, establishing a garden to grow food,

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

which is of interest to many students, is foreclosed as an option. If the
contaminant limits used had been for unrestricted use, the developer
would be forced to decontaminate the site so as to enable other uses
besides conventionally defined residential use, an official definition
that also presumes that people do not grow food where they reside.
In this manner, they were able to reassure the public that the levels of
lead found on the site are to be regarded as safe.

Finally, the consultants considered contaminant-bearing dust
heaved up through construction work as if it were innocuous to the
health of future residents and as if it would remain largely within
the building site. Their view of the health of future residents explic-
itly assumes that only adults would live in the housing units. This
is a rather unlikely outcome, as both faculty and students may have
children. Just as gratuitous is the assumption of adults having no
sensitivity to the contaminants to which they could be exposed. For
the dust diffusion aspect, there was no analysis of wind patterns
to determine where exposure and accumulation risks could occur
elsewhere in other areas. There was little basis for the consultants'
assumption that contaminant- bearing dust will be confined to the
project site.

This example of official practices in assessing environmental prob-
lems brings out many of the social and ecological issues that tend to
be hidden from view in discussions about environmental degradation.
By ensuring a largely positive outcome in the environmental impact
assessment, such diligent misapplication of technical skill systemati-
cally narrowed the kind of information available for public discussion
in favor of those whose interests were served by the residential con-
struction project. Ostensibly, this could be interpreted as an example
of science under the influence of local or regional capitalists. However,
it is scientists themselves who are involved in producing know ledge on
the environment and decisions over land use or over how to handle the
negative long-term effects of past impacts are usually far from straight-
forward. Such decisions usually involve several competing bourgeois
and allied interests (despotic or reformist) and sometimes even the
influence of anti-capitalist dissidents (authoritarian or revolutionary).
In this case, matters seemed to proceed favorably for the corporation,
the college administration, and their allies until local land and business
owners entered the fray and asserted their weight, conveying their
displeasure with the potential tax exoneration for the construction
firm. After at least three intense public deliberations, local govern-
ment permission for the project was stalled, to the convergent relief of
most local property owners and some anti -capitalist and reformist local

Muted Everyday Disasters

activists. The struggle to expand college residences and tax-exempt
profits continues, as does the drive to accumulate capital regardless of
ecological consequences.

The context just described has its particularities, such as location
along a formerly glaciated valley, seasonally high water tables due to
proximity to a river, often stony soils, high topographical variabil-
ity, a buried history of conquest, slavery, and genocide, the presence
of wealthy multiple-property owners or land speculators, a predomi-
nance of reformist politics (not just environmental), a large number
of artisans, a seasonal influx of thousands of students, no bombing
raids from an imperial power, and so on. However, some of the basic
processes involved in the struggle over land use and in the relation-
ship between social and ecosystems can be extended to other places.
Soil contamination issues may have been submerged as quickly as they
surfaced in the debates over the construction of a college residence
on a former orchard. Yet what persist are not only the amounts of
different contaminants, which may ultimately be negligible relative
to human health (so one hopes), but also the effects of soil proper-
ties and other environmental forces (including micro-organisms) on
the potential mobility- of those contaminants. This is aside from the
local eco-social histories that led to the existence of an orchard and its
abandonment in a certain part of town and to the industrial farming
practices that resulted in effects still to be felt decades later. It is also
in addition to the linkages the town has with other places, linkages
that have brought about changes in local land use and environmental
impact over time, such as the establishment and expansion of a college,
the influx of real estate investments (including the above-cited con-
struction firm), and the influence of environmental activism. This is by
no means a one way process, since what happens in this town (called
"village" in administration speak) can have larger-scale consequences,
such as setting examples by officially accepting same-sex marriage or
by affixing solar panels on municipal buildings. And all this is, finally,
in addition to the environmental processes that extend beyond the
area where the town is located and that are also affected by now largely
capitalist human impact, like regional and global changes in air circu-
lation, leading to differences in the reach of human-induced acid rain
from elsewhere and to more or less precipitation or higher and lower
temperatures at different times of year. These are far-reaching forces
that shape the fate of soil contaminants through changes in soil pH,
organic matter (OM) decomposition rates, related microbial activi-
ties, and other processes affecting the fate of locally introduced soil
contaminants.

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

The Purpose, Contribution, and Organization
of This Work

The above example centered on a political conflict over land use in
New Paltz could be considered an application of a framework whereby
aspects of both social and wider ecological processes (e.g., soil con-
tamination) are supposed to be considered and studied in explaining
change in people -environment relations, referred to here as ecoso-
cial change (for reasons explained in the concluding chapter). The
intertwining of social and biophysical study remains rare. Whereas
mainstream capitalism -friendly science largely reflects lack of aware-
ness if not tacit acceptance of relations of power and institutionalized
divisions of scientific labor, within critical and leftist scholarship, the
problem seems to originate in a combination of acceptance of lim-
its imposed by prevailing knowledge production divisions (e.g., social
and natural sciences) and flaws in the overall approach related to
shallow understandings of biophysical processes.

This book makes four contributions to leftist and critical schol-
arship as well as soil science. One is a critical appraisal and revision
of soil science fundamentals from an ecosocial perspective developed
out of existing leftist and critical works. Another is to show a way of
integrating conventional, positivist scientific work with the formula-
tion of alternative ways of defining, analyzing, and explaining soils.
This includes reconceptualizing soil quality and degradation in such a
way as to account for both social relations of domination, soil dynam-
ics, and wider ecological processes. A third contribution is to expand
and update previous critical analyses to expose the capitalist ideology
underpinning much of soil science, including the ways in which such
ideology permeates understandings of soils and explanations of soil
degradation. To my knowledge, this is also the first effort at bring-
ing together leftist and critical studies on soil degradation. Finally, in
reviewing leftist and critical scholarship on soils, I demonstrate how
a lack of involvement in or attentiveness to soils research debilitates
some of the major leftist approaches and theories on environmental
degradation.

A lack of direct study of the biophysical processes has resulted
in sometimes flawed theorization regarding people-environment rela-
tions and has contributed to ineffective challenge to capitalist mystifi-
cations in the biophysical sciences. Chapter 2 provides an introduction
to soil processes and major characteristics to explore the simultane-
ously nonhuman and social basis of producing soils knowledge. The
limits and erroneous assumptions prevalent in soil science on these

Muted Everyday Disasters

issues are highlighted. Chapter 3 constitutes a critical overview of the
concept and deployment of soil quality, which underlies notions of
soil degradation. An alternative, socially contextualizing way of defin-
ing soil quality is introduced. Chapter 4 is an investigation into the
problematic nature of defining soil degradation, which follows from
faulty understandings of soil quality, and of the actual information
available to determine the extent and severity of soil degradation
worldwide. It turns out that claims of global soil degradation rest
on geographically very uneven quality and reliability of evidence and
that, conceptually, soil degradation research is fraught with capital-
ist assumptions. Similar problems exist with claims about soil erosion
and these are brought to bear in refuting the "peak soil" thesis and
related arguments. Rather than making unsupportable arguments, all
concerned about soil degradation should clamor for greater research
funding for worldwide and more appropriate data collection and anal-
ysis. However, such research must be contextualized to make sense of
soil degradation. To this end, an alternative is offered on the basis
of existing critical works available since the late 1970s. Tenuously
supported claims of worldwide soil degradation are also used in soil
degradation theories, addressed in Chapter 5, to argue mainly for
population growth or mismanagement as primary drivers or to warn
of civilization collapse. The civilizationist thesis is challenged along
with populationist and mismanagement theories on the basis of both
faulty evidence and capitalist, if not racist biases. Regrettably, some
leftist approaches are contributing to reinforcing such technocratic
and supremacist views. In Chapter 6, I summarize and evaluate the
insightful critical and leftist contributions to countering mainstream
theories. After discussing their importance and limitations (mainly
in failing to address capitalist relations), I critique certain leftist cur-
rents, mainly eco-Marxist and world-systems, that exhibit sometimes
fatal errors because of insufficient attention to biophysical processes or
research. Examples are also discussed of how lack of attention to soils
research leads to undermining entire theories. Particular attention is
given to leftists 1 assumptions about soils as homogeneous, exhausted,
or actants.

In the concluding chapter, I describe the foundations of an ecoso-
cial perspective (one that locates the social in the ecological while
addressing the social basis of knowledge production) and how this
general approach assists in reinterpreting soil degradation, avoiding
social reductionism and depoliticizing perspectives. The above-
described example in New Paltz describes the multiple-scaled inter-
connections and reciprocally constitutive processes between social

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

relations and soil dynamics that inform such an ccosocial framework.
As discussed in the concluding chapter, these interconnections are not
necessarily direct and their relative intensities depend on several fac-
tors: (1 ) the local ecological context, including soil type; (2) social and
ecological/soil histories; (3) interconnections with other social sys-l
terns; and (4) the effects of wider environmental processes. A general
theory is offered regarding the relationship between soil degradation
and the capitalist mode of production. The main argument is that the
soil-destructive tendencies of capitalist relations must not be confused
for any necessarily terminal devastation because, among other reasons,
soils entail far more numerous processes than social relations alone.
This explanatory approach is a way to challenge soil (or biophysical)
scientists to consider social relations seriously and leftist scholars on
environmental degradation to become more involved in producing
knowledge about biophysical processes, rather than continue as largely
passive users thereof.

Chapter 2

— —

Soils and Their Classification:
Ecological Processes and
Social Struggles

Prior to discussing soil quality or degradation, it is helpful to
examine, even if to a limited extent, what soils are and how they
change. The issue of defining soils is complicated in part because soils
are assemblages of different materials and organisms that are otten
independent of one another, even as they form a whole. Soils usually
grade seamlessly into each other and their boundaries can be ambigu-
ous. Another source of difficulty is that field observation is frequently
contingent on the degree to which one can dig to expose soils. Even
then, if one looks attentively, the staggering complexity of the material
tends to thwart any straightforward definition (Arnold and Eswaran

2003, 29; Schaetzl and Anderson 2005, 3 ).

There is no single way of identifying phenomena as soils because
prevailing understandings of soils are also context dependent. Work
in ethnopedologv 1 (e.g., Barrera-Bassols and Zinck 2003; Landa
and Feller 2010- Sandor and Furbee 1996; Steiner et al. 2009;
WinklerPrins and Sandor 2003), environmental history (Showers
2006, 126-131), political ecology (Zimmerer 1994), and, rarely,
leftist research (Bradley 1983; Engel-Di Mauro 2003) demonstrates
variety to be the norm. Most who recognize the socially contingent
meaning of soils are nevertheless constrained by tacit adherence to
a capitalist framework. This can be seen in functionalistic notions,
dividing meanings according to whether someone is a gardener,
an engineer, or something else (e.g., Gobat, Aragno, and Matthey

2004, 11; Schaetzl and Anderson 2005, 9; Sprecher 2001, 3), or

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

in their technocratic approach, whereby definitions are given with-
out any qualifications as to social context (e.g., Gerrard 2000; Hillel
1991; Johnson, Domier, and Johnson 2005 ). Otherwise, soil knowl-
edge is reduced to catalogue -like descriptions (e.g., Eswaran et al.
2003; Krupenikov 1981; Warkentin 2006; Yaalon and Berkowicz
1997), with little appreciation for historical change and the intra-
and intersocietal power relations in knowledge production or meaning
construction (Engel-Di Mauro 2006; 2012a). These latter kinds of
analyses remain largely ignored in ethnopedology and soil science his-
tory, pervaded as they are by assumptions of community homogeneity
and an oppression-free world.

Nevertheless, studies in ethnopedology and soil science history
point to overlap in the content of such diverse understandings, which
convinces me that soil knowledge systems should be viewed as largely
complementary This is even more so when formal science is dis-
tinguished from other forms of knowledge (e.g., Eswaran et al.
2003; WinklerPrins and Sandor 2003). Formal, biophysical sciences
usually focus on a limited scope of processes related to a specific sub-
ject of study and contribute systematicity and generalizability about
that specific subject. Wider cultural understandings integrate obser-
vations and explanations about subjects like soils into an overarching
worldview linked to concrete soil -impacting practices, usually within
more restricted ecological contexts, and the large array of factors con-
fronted by people living off soils stimulate the development of insights
often missed bv outsider scientists (Brookfield 2001, 80-82; Stocking
2003).

There is then complementarity, but also difference because

(a) "natural science" and "local knowledge" systems are part of
and/or have derived from multiple cultural frameworks, with a
recent imposition and predominance of capitalist Eurocentric perspec-
tives (see Federici 1995; Needham 1954; Van Sertima 1988), and

(b) nonhuman phenomena occur independently of humans' under-
standings of them. The processes involved in what is regarded as
scientific knowledge are not co-extensive with those regarded as local j
or traditional knowledge because the former is a product of many
cultural traditions and so can traverse and be accommodated into
many cultures. For example, the establishment of criteria for identi-l
lying and distinguishing soils is a process common to many cultural
traditions and the distinctions made have much correspondence with
those laid out through institutional scientific versions (e.g., Barrera- I
Bassols, Zinck, and Van Ranst 2006, 131-132). In Martinique and ]

Soils and Their Classification

St. Lucia, Feller and Blanchart (2010) show that farmers have their
own theory of soil formation that contrasts with current mainstream
scientific understandings, but such a theory seems to have developed
by merging with earlier scientific theories. The view of soils as mainly
an instrument for maximizing yield or as natural capital is instead
one that emerges out of a specific, capitalist cultural complex that
is predominantly of western European historical origin. Neverthe-
less, different kinds of knowledge about soils are mutually intelligible
because biophysical processes are not reducible to people's shared
notions, values, and beliefs, and because often what is regarded as local
or scientific is an outcome of historical interactions among diverse
social systems. In this sense, science is not comparable or analogous
to a worldview or culture.

Ethnopedologists and others studying soil knowledge systems and
the history of soil science should be mindful of this, instead of
assuming a homogeneous scientific or technical perspective devoid of
cultural specificity and then contrasting this presumed culture-free sci-
ence with various local knowledge systems that stand in for different
worldviews. Even within similar capitalist societies, there are multiple
scientific or technical perspectives, sometimes at odds with each other,
revealing the cultural framework out of which they emerge.

For instance, in a 2012 issue of the Soil Science Society of America
Journal, three articles appeared of strikingly different persuasions.
Drohan and Brittingham (2012) treat soils as avenues to facilitate
shale-methane extraction using hydraulic fracturing techniques in
Pennsylvania (USA). In a region where such mining is highly con-
tentious, focusing on the manageability of the extraction process
means supporting petrochemical industries. In contrast, Williams,
Buck, and Beyene (2012) see soils in terms of their ecological ben-
efits (water conservation and nutrient retention) by way of biological
soil crusts in deserts (the Muddy Mountains Wilderness Area, Nevada,
USA). Yet another article (Capra et al. 2012) shows how chemical
industries in Sardegna have so altered the developmental trajectory
of dry forest soils, through digging, movement, and re-deposition,
as to turn them into thin dry soils with forest soil attributes. These
works reflect a range of perspectives on soils that are steeped in social
processes. While the first and second represent bourgeois struggles
over environments relative to resource exploitation and conservation,
the third implicitly throws a wrench in the nature -society dichotomy
typical of capitalist societies (and the soil scientists who unwittingly
reproduce the ideology) but without venturing into social causes.

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

In fact, social causes (e.g., local chemical industries' profit impera-
tives and political clout) are whitewashed through vague allusions to
"industrial activities."

Even when soil scientists recognize the legitimacy of other forms
of soil knowledge, they are unable to escape a bourgeois and/or
settler colonial ideology. To illustrate, Gobat, Aragno, and Matthey
(2004, 3) acknowledge that the "scientific approach is but one of
many, all equally respectable and necessary to understand as soon
as we leave the academic confines of research for its application.'*
This soil science incarnation of liberal democratic rhetoric of equal
rights, where ultimately might makes right, effaces actual scientific
practice, such as consolidating, by elision, colonial institutions' anni-
hilation of Indigenous Peoples' soil classification systems. In Australia,
Fitzpatrick et al. (2003, 79-80) trace the first soil classification to
the 1930s, thanks to the work of a white man named J. A. Prescott,
who also brought some Russian soil scientific influence into the work!
Later versions incorporated various aspects of American soil catego-
rization schemes. In no occasion is there any question regarding the
reasons for the absence of any influence by Indigenous soils knowl-
edge or why the prospect has not been at all considered. The South
African system seems also to have developed since the 1890s as
if African societies and their soil knowledge systems never existed.
Only the influence of the US soil taxonomy is recognized (Laker
2003). Similarly, any analysis or discussion of the knowledge systems
of Indigenous Peoples or their possible contributions is completely
absent in the Brazilian national soil classification system (Palmieri
et al. 2003). In New Zealand, there seems to be little sign that soil
scientists ever considered, for instance, Maori knowledge systems in
devising soil categories, which was not systematically undertaken until
the 1960s (Hewitt, A. E. 2003).

In the United States and Canada, erasing or marginalizing Native
Americans is standard fare. In a recent publication on soil and water
conservation in the United States, Tanaka et al. (2010) begin their
description of the history of summer fallow cultivation in the North-
ern Great Plains with settlers' experiences. Native Americans simply
do not exist, not even after the European invasions. Elsewhere in the
same volume, this invasion is called "settlement." Apparently, the con-
tinent was unsettled until Europeans came. This is a pervasive wording
that is a typical apologist maneuver in North America for a history
of conquest and genocide. Soil scientists and agronomists reproduce
such insidious terms probably without much thought behind it. Here
is the fuller rendition:

Soils and Their Classification

Before Euro-American settlement, the Great Plains were largely covered
with grasses . . . During this prehistorical period, as later, the high evapora-
tive demand and uncertain rainfall surely encouraged the first irrigation in
t he southern Great Plains, which occurred as diversions of surface waters in
Kansas . . . and in the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles.

(Stewart, Baumhardt, and Evett 2012, 105)

To such authors, there are no Native American histories; it is all
"pre-history" until Europeans arrive. Adding insult to injury, to these
scientists the peoples who inhabited and still inhabit that region do
not even have names (only "Hispanic farmers" are acknowledged).
This settler colonizer discourse is shared by, if not derived from, the
social sciences generally. It is part of a widespread and persisting set-
der colonial ideology (Abrol and Nambiar 1997; Leach and Mearns
1996; Seth 2009). In this, I take issue with leftists who deem colonial
science a thing of the past or who view the present as a postcolonial
situation (e.g., MacLeod 2001; Prakash 1999; Tilley 2011).

The above -described scientific investigations and statements evince
the cultural context wherein they are carried out with respect to
the expressed concerns and focus, the scope of the studies, and the
often implicit ideological commitments, among other things. Soil sci-
ence, as any other endeavor aiming to produce knowledge, cannot be
regarded as independent of the social context in which it develops.
Yet this is precisely how scientific or technical knowledge contin-
ues to be understood. Notwithstanding this troubling epistemological
grounding, ethnopedology studies in particular demonstrate that what
enables overlap in soil knowledge systems is the commonality of
the nonhuman phenomena with which different societies relate and
demonstrating this is in itself no small feat.

The issue, as exemplified by settler colonial perspectives on soil
knowledge, is not so much about knowledge itself, as it is about the
power relations that not only create but also privilege a knowledge
system while suppressing and at the same time borrowing from oth-
ers (Merchant 1980; Needham 1954; Van Sertima 1988). This is also
where ethnopedological work could be a potent antidote, if it incor-
porated analyses of power relations as central. As Foucault (1971),
among others, understood, knowledge is intertwined with power rela-
tions. However, in the case of knowledge of soils and nonhuman
worlds broadly, there is a fundamental error in seeing knowledge as
solely originating from social processes. That Foucault had virtually
nothing to say about the environment is in this case no coincidence.
It is patently not just humans who construct soils or environments

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

(or even human bodies). Soils do not solely come about discursivelj
and the processes that comprise what we may call soils do exist
independently of our thoughts or "governmentalitv" about them
While insightful for studying environmental politics and people's
understandings of environments (Luke 1999,, a constructionist view
is too rigid and restrictive. The distinction between science and local
knowledge should anyway be regarded with much suspicion, if not
rejected outright as a false dichotomy (or as a dichotomy that serves
certain political ends). I concentrate in this volume on mainstream
rormal scientific perspectives on soils not because of their greater
merits on the subject, but because thev furnish criteria for global I
comparisons (necessary to analyze the environmental outcomes of an
inherently globally expansionistic capitalist mode of production) and
because such perspectives have become prevalent worldwide, inform-
ing, among others, institutional politics, environmental activism and I
leftist approaches. In other words, my analytical emphasis does not
preclude a critical appraisal of science and" knowledge production I
outside formal institutions. I

When Is Something a Soil?

Formal scientific definitions for soils vary, but thev usually acknowl- 1
edge that soils are made of broken-down materials from' rocks and I
organisms. Some emphasize the definitive presence of organisms (eg
Gerrard 2000, 1). Others do not appreciate organisms to the same I
H' SS (e ' S " J JU ° and Franzlue bbers 2003, 17). As reports from I
the Mars Viking and Sojourner space expeditions insist that soils exist I
on Mars (Certmi and Scalenghe 2006, 208-210), some are devising
ways to include other planets and reserving terms like "biomantle"* I
J " Ear J (Ba ™ n 2005 > 8 89; Johnson, Dormer, and Johnson I
2005, Paton Humphreys, and Mitchell 1995, 161). But prudence 1
■s strongly advisable here. If organisms and organic matter (OM) are I
optional, there is little reason to differentiate soils from, say, lifeless I
sand d unes , n the Atacama Desm (Navarro . Gonzakz ct j I

At this point, the term "soil" does not really convey much information
beyond referring to a bunch of loose particles of various sizes, other-
wise : known as sediment (unconsolidated deposited materials). In this I
ight, t would seem more sensible to opt for a more exclusionary eco-

Ko^Tf ( H° bat ' Matthe >' 2 ° 04 ' "! You "g »d

MM ilSP f°v P ° Slt th3t the Creation of soils re <J uir « organisms '
LSDA 2006, 1; laalon 2000,. In contrast to sediment, then, soH
are composed of organisms, water, air, and bound weathered m neral

Soils and Their Classification

and organic material. According to the more ecologically minded, it
is decisively bound at the molecular scale, as a clay-humus complex 3
(Gobat, Aragno, and Matthey 2004, 65). This last aspect could be
used to ascertain the distinction from sediments, but this may not be
workable in the case of subaqueous soils, for example (Demas and
Rabenhorst 1999).

The range of sometimes contrasting definitions reflects the diffi-
culty of identifying soils. As admitted by the Soil Survey Staff of the
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), "In some places
the separation between soil and nonsoil is so gradual that clear distinc-
tions cannot be made" (Soil Survey Staff 2006, 1). Besides omitting
the existence of debate on this matter, the USDA staff might be under-
estimating the frequency of such murkiness. Figure 2.1 a-c shows three
cases to illustrate the point. Picture (a) is from Oakland's Estuary Park
(California, USA), displaying pickleweed (Salicornia spp.) at low tide
and growing at the brackish water's edge. During high tide, such suc-
culent salt-tolerant plants are usually submerged in part or entirely.
Picture (b) shows a pit dug on cultivated land, exposing a soil pro-
file in Ridfalva (Baranya County, Hungary). Picture (c) shows several
deciduous trees living on conglomerate sandstone on the lower-lying
eastern portion of the Shawangunk Ridge (New York State, USA).

Figure 2.1a A selection of soils in different environments

20 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

Figure 2.1b (Continued)

In one way or another, all of the illustrations can be considered
soils, depending on interpretation. The first example might seem sur-
prising, but since at least the 1970s, there has been official recognition
of submerged (hydric or wetland) soils, mainly in terrestrial and coastal
wetlands (Kirk 2004; Mausbach and Barker 2001, 20). Soils have even
been argued to develop under shallow seawater (less than 2.5 m at low
tide), in estuaries and coastal marine environments. This is because

Soils and Their Classification 21

Figure 2.1c (Continued)

those soils show distinct layers forming through variants of the basic
soil-forming processes described on land. Bottom-dwelling organisms
like seagrass not only anchor themselves on underwater sediments but
also actively shape the characteristics of the sediment on which they
settle. By so doing, they lead to the formation of layers with heteroge-
neous attributes, like carbonate enrichment, the formation of humus
( highly decomposed organic material), and the movement and modifi-
cation of elements like iron and sulfur (Bradley and Stolt 2003; Demas
and Rabenhorst 2001 ). 4 Underwater soils are not, incidentally, a new
category. Some have thought of them as soils as far back as the 1800s
(Demas and Rabenhorst 1999).

The second case probably qualifies as soils in most people's estima-
tion because of its location and the relatively loose underlying mate-
rial. This is the usual way soils are understood, as land-based resources.
Yet the barely perceptible thin soil associated with plants growing on a
rocky outcrop — the third example — does not appear to fit the conven-
tional pattern. It is far from obvious where soil begins and ends. This
third illustration of trees growing directly on rock suggests that using
rooting depth as a gauge, as often done, does not necessarily yield any
more clarity about soils and is actually contradicted by microorganisms
thriving where no roots can reach (Buscot 2005, 3).

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

This matter of defining and identifying soils mav seem pedantic
but there can be a lot at stake. Consider the issue of soil erosion and
biodiversity. The recognition of subaqueous soils implies a need to
revise soil erosion estimates, as eroded material can benefit subaqueous
soils' development (Demas and Rabenhorst 2001), and to include
marine species as part of soil biodiversity accounts. A lack of differen-
tiation between soil and sediment can lead to inflating erosion figures,
if one, for example, counts erosion of beach or arid land sediment'
Martian soils have repercussions for soil degradation accounts. None
of this means that the great variety of features under the surface we
walk on (or dive into) defies definition, but there needs to be much
greater acknowledgment of such problems by experts compared to the
peremptory statements they typically make.

Soil Formation (Pedogenesis): Processes and Factors

Criteria to distinguish soils rest on theories of soil formation, whether*
so admitted or not. Most see the role of organisms as foundational
in altering sediment to produce soils. Hence, those proposing the
existence of soils on other planets directlv contradict this generally
accepted Mew and, as far as I know, cannot address the problem of
distinguishing soils from sediments. Generally, there is consensus that
the current characteristics of soils form out of the additions, losses,
and internal movements and transformations of materials. Additions
are exemplified by OM accumulation as fallen leaves are biodegraded
and made eventually into humus. Removals can include such things
as rainfall-induced erosion or leaching out of nitrates from a soil and
into groundwater. Translocations involve such processes as water per-
colating from one horizon (layer) to another or rocks being heaved
upward by ice forming and expanding in the lower parts of a soil
Finally, transformations can be illustrated by regular weathering of
minerals or the breakdown in place of organic compounds (Buol
et al. 2003; Gerrard 2000; Schaetzl and Anderson 2005). These pro- 1
cesses that happen within soils are crucial to the cvcling of major
nutrients and water in ecosystems. So, if soils are degraded, the
cycles are hampered and the whole ecosystem is affected. Processes
of soil formation are intimately linked to the functioning of most
2005 r d C ° aStal CC ° SyStCmS (Buscot 2005 ' Wal1 ' Fitter > and Paulj

These four soil-forming processes occur through the interactions ofl
several overarching factors. This way of understanding soil formation
is often called the functional -factorial model. Most agree on the

Soils and Their Classification

main factors being climate, organisms, topography, and parent mate-
rial (original materials out of which soils form). 5 Climate affects soil
formation through, for example, precipitation and temperature con-
tributing to the weathering (physical or chemical breakdown) of rock
minerals. Relatively high precipitation can alter the pH (often lower-
ing it over time) and accelerate weathering and movement of material
down the soil. Organisms can leave long-lasting, if not permanent,
imprints on soil properties. For instance, some people in some soci-
eties add marl or lime to raise soil pH and fertility. Trees, with their
usually longer rooting depth, tend to provide more soil stability, but
less OM than grasses, which contribute greater topsoil humus with
their high rootlet turnover rate. Termites and earthworms can mix and
relocate large quantities of soil, while microorganisms, such as bacte-
ria, are crucial to nutrient cycling (e.g., populations of the bacterium
genus Nitrobacter facilitate the oxidation of nitrite to nitrate, a form of
nitrogen used by plants). Beavers ( Castor canadensis), by constructing
dams, foraging, and digging, have a major influence in the formation
of wetland soils by modifying stream velocity and capacity (affect-
ing sedimentation and erosion rates and distribution) and mixing and
inundating soils, among other impacts (Johnston 2001). Topography
affects soil formation through elevation, aspect (the slope's cardinal
orientation), and slope geometry. For example, slope geometry, espe-
cially the length of a slope, affects erosion rates. Soil chemical and
mineralogical characteristics sometimes reflect the parent material on
which it developed. For instance, some soils are acidic as a result of
underlying or added material derived from felsic igneous and meta-
morphic rock, such as granite and gneiss. These factors interact over
time so that time can be considered an additional factor. Some jus-
tifiably add extreme events or catastrophes, such as hurricanes and
earthquakes, or some forms of human activity because of the magni-
tude of impact (e.g., large volumes of earth movement), sometimes
wiping soils out altogether (Certini and Scalenghe 2006, 205-208;
Rozanov, Targulian, and Orlov 1990; Schaetzl and Anderson 2005,
293). Because soils are the outcome of the interaction of several fac-
tors acting over differing durations and at differing rates, there is great
soil diversity.

It can take hundreds to thousands of years to form or destroy a
soil, and sometimes it can take minutes to months, depending on
how these factors interact and on the occurrence, magnitude, and/or
frequency of extreme events (including by way of human actions).
The potential for regressive effects contrasts with the more popular
notions of soil formation as a linear, progressive tendency toward the

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

attainment of an ultimate steady-state soil (not coincidentally remi-
niscent of climax community theory in ecology or the wider belief
in a static "balance of nature" only disrupted by humans). 6 Some
argue that parent material or even the subsoil above parent material
has often little or nothing to do with what happens on the surface
(Brookiield 2001, 89-90; Paton, Humphreys, and Mitchell 1995)7
Topsoil has also been shown to develop much more rapidly than the
millennia required for mineral weathering (breakdown) and resistant
OM decomposition. Sometimes it develops more than 10 cm overj
a few decades and then the process slows down considerably (e.g. I
Howard and Olszewska 2011; Phillips, Turkington, and Marion 2008;!
Stockman et al 2010). In the end, there is no predetermined type:
of soil for a given set of conditions simply because the state of soil-
forming factors chan ges and the developments within soils themselves I
(e.g., downward clay movement after carbonates are dissolved) can
lead to the irrevocable crossing of thresholds (Gerrard 2000; Phillips
2001; Schaetzl and Anderson 2005, 295-317).

The Status of Human Impact Relative to Soil Formation

In the various models of pedogenesis, human intervention has rarely
featured as intrinsic to the story. This is reflected in the continu-
ing ambiguities in soil classification nomenclature aiming to include
human-altered soils (Bryant and Galbraith 2003, 62; Dudal 2004;
Lehman 2006). Yet people shape the course of soil development in
many ways, both constructively and destructively (Brookfield 2001,
96-99; Rozanov, Targulian, and Orlov 1990). Certain soil types or
characteristics would not even exist without the influence of specif-
ically human intervention (e.g., Eidt 1977; Sandor and Eash 1995;
Yaalon 2000). The form of human impact varies considerably over
time and place. There are general trends that have been picked up
by soil scientists even with the coarsest of analyses and that point
to a general chronological sequence in terms of progressively greater I
intensification of human impact.

Prior to capitalist social relations, the norm, excepting some large
centralized authoritarian societies, seems to have been more construe- 1
tive in the relationship between people and soils. In many places, over I
the span of centuries to thousands of years, the development trajectory
of entire soils has been ineluctably altered because of terracing, which
can reduce erosion, or contributing organic materials, such as in the
case of terra preta or platen soils (Anthrosols, in the FAO classifica-
tion system), whose present high fertility and overall characteristics

Soils and Their Classification

is closely related to the impacts of past, non-capitalist societies
(Beach et al. 2002; Davidson et al. 2006; Kaufman and James 1991;
McFadgen 1980; Sandor, Gersper, and Hawley 1986; Van Smeerdijk,
Spek, and Kooistra 1995; Xiubin et al. 2002). Impact has also
been occasionally destructive or transformative through, for instance,
deforestation-related accelerated erosion and irrigation-induced salt
build-up.

Recently human influence has intensified in unprecedented and
mostly deleterious ways (but see Chapter 4). Soils are enriched
through a large variety- of sources with synthetically produced nutri-
ents, heavy metals, and/or organic pollutants. Mining for ores, fossil
fuels, or even topsoil has resulted in truncation or complete disappear-
ance of soils. There can be compaction due to heavy vehicle traffic and
the constant modification to water and air flow with the introduction
and maintenance of subsoil tubes, pipes, and wires. Soils can be cov-
ered up with asphalt, cement, or other less permeable materials, and
this effectively buries soils. Industrially produced acid rain and dust
can shape the chemical characteristics of soils, as does the addition of
lime or sulfur compounds to change soil pH. Dumping of loose earth
on top of a soil alters the make-up of horizons. Deep plowing leads
to greater exposure of OM to oxygen and enhances its degradation.
The alteration of soil organism habitats (e.g., reduction of OM) can
lead to higher rates of soil erosion, as in the case of some endogeic
earthworms (Blanchart et al. 2004). Soils have developed out of con-
struction debris, landfills, and assorted accumulated rubbish, among
other sources, such that parent material may be human derived. Such
impacts are also altering soils that developed their characteristics as a
result of human impact, such as terracing and OM input. Terra preta
soils are being exposed through plowing where plantations have been
established, increasing OM losses. In some regions, hardship induced
by capitalist policies (e.g., favoring factory employment) has led to
depopulation, terrace abandonment (and collapse), and erosion (e.g.,
Yaalon 1997). These days, soils are even manufactured synthetically as
turf or topsoil for market sale, something that is also rarely recognized
by soil specialists and that after centuries would likely be difficult to
discern from human-impacted soils developed in place.

A study of why it has taken so long for soil scientists to attend
to this issue could make for a separate treatise, but one could start
with the thesis that subservience to market-oriented farming, associ-
ated with ideologies of human nature (which persist in different garb),
stymied the development of analytical tools in soil science to study
the effects of human impact on pedogenesis. Concerns over human

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

impact have long existed, but were quite selective (largely confine
to farming issues), and from the 1920s, by way of soil conserva-
tion, often served colonial dictatorships or government disciplining of
small-holding farmers (Blaikie 1985). Not much attention was given
to human impact outside farming until the 1960s (e.g., Simonson
1973; Zemlyanitskiy 1963 ) and only within the past two decades have
there been concerted efforts to revise how soils are classified (e.g.,
ISRIC 2002), with various agencies set up for the purpose, such as
the International Committee on Anthropogenic Soils. 8 It is not any
advancement through new discoveries that enable soil science finally
to encompass the study of humans' role in soil formation. Instead,
it is a change in many soil scientists' perspective related to wider
changes in society, which affect the ways in w hich soil formation is
conceived, as well as how soils are defined and categorized. This is
occasionally revealed by soil scientists themselves, especially in more
introspective works about their role in the world. This is exempli-
fied by acknowledging that soil science was tied from the start to
agriculture institutions, to the detriment of studying soils as part of
ecosystems or of developing soil science as part of a wider environ-
mental science (cf. Keenev 2000; Menzel 1991; Singer and Warkentin
1996).

Nevertheless, there has been debate on people's roles in the making
of soils, especially over the past couple of decades, focused on whether
humans should be considered as part of the organisms factor (e.g.,
Amundson and Jenny 1991; Jenny 1941) or as an entirely separate
factor (e.g., Effland and Pouyat 1997; Hillel 2008, 20). Those who
prefer to retain a single factor for organisms still confer people special
or exceptional status compared to other organisms (e.g., abstract rea-1
soning, goal-directed behavior), so it is difficult to tell these arguments
apart. Dudal (2004, 2), for instance, insists on humans as a separate
factor but on the basis of the same reasons as Amundson and Jenny
(1991, 101 ). 9 Others argue that human impact cannot be treated on
an equal basis with other factors because of "the relatively brief time-
span over which humans have altered soil" and because, "when the
human influence is strong, the other state factors are usually forced to
change" (Schaetzl and Anderson 2006, 317).

This issue seems much more a form of pedantry. The view than
human influence has been too brief compared to that of other fac-j
tors is difficult to reconcile with the thousands of years of pedogenic
effects of various forms of impact (e.g., Yaalon 1997), including agri-
culture, which Schaetzl and Anderson themselves mention (2006,
318). In fact, ancient human influences on soil formation have set

Soils and Their Classification

the stage for more recent human -induced changes that are so far only
decades in duration, as in the use of platen soils in The Netherlands
for industrialized farming. It seems the matter of brevity is entirely
beside the point. Such reasoning also underestimates, if not ignores,
other long-term and ancient anthropogenic effects, such as with the
use of fire, the practice of herding, building of housing structures, and
the making of pottery (which entails clay mining from soils and has
been confirmed for some ancient gathering-hunting societies; Kaner
2013)- Human contribution to soil-making should instead be con-
sidered as ancient as the human species, in one degree or another,
since land-based organisms ahvays have some effect on the formation
and development of soils. 10 Finally, instances of greater anthropogenic
intensitv may have effects similar to extreme events like volcanic erup-
tions, but seismic events or climate change also have effects on even
the most soil-impacting societies. There is, therefore, little justification
for excluding humans from being part of the organisms factor or for
giving humans an exceptional role in the formation or destruction of
soils.

Limits of Soil Science in Addressing Human Impact

Ultimately, the issue is not about adding another factor or not, but
about the relative degree and form of human impact, which varies
tremendously over time and place (Rozanov, Targulian, and Orlov
1990, 204-205). To appreciate that diversity of impact, at a min-
imum one must consider differences within and between societies,
rather than refer to a generic humanity. The frequent presumption
that urban soils can be lumped together and described through the
same approach belies the inability of soil scientists to consider the het-
erogeneitv of cities, many of which are not industrialized or have little
to no histories of large-scale manufacturing. This is another illustra-
tion of the repercussions of failing to study social processes, which
largely determine urban characteristics and hence soil formation in
those places. One should be equally attentive to other organisms'
variable impacts within species relative to context, but this is seldom
done and soil ecosystems remain understudied (Wall, Fitter, and Paul
2005 ). Some studies suggest a negligible impact on soil dynamics, but
the effects examined are typically limited to the relationships between
organisms. For example, root composition diversity' within cabbage
has been found to lead to greater or lesser numbers of nematodes
without altering the soil food web, but the analysis is confined to
interspecific relations (Kabouw et al. 2010). In contrast, West et al.

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

(2001) report that different populations from the same earthworm
species {Lumbricus rubellus) excreted different amounts of strontium
which over time could affect that element's distribution in soil (sec
also Sizmuretal. 2011).

In soil science, this sort of rare, detailed intraspecific analysis does
not really exist with respect to human impact. Just as in the current
distinctions made in the FAO system between Anthrosol (namely agri-
cultural) and Technosol (namely urban), soil scientists tend to lump
different societies together on account of similarities in outcomes of
land use. As a result, one gets the impression that they have trouble
disnnguishing between such land uses as intercropping and lev-fallow
systems or between large metropolitan urban centers with very little
(e.g., Rome, Italy) and intense (e.g., Philadelphia, USA) manufac-
turing histories (McDonnel and Pickett 1990; Sandor, Burras, and
Thompson 2005).

Soil scientists rarely venture into analyzing the social aspects of soil
formation, but when they do, the results leave much to be desired
For example, Amundson and Jenny (1991) formulate a model that
includes genetic and cultural variations as independent factors 11 and
human phenotypic and cultural inheritance as dependent on genet-
ics, culture, climate, organisms, topographs, parent material, time
and other soil-forming factors. To simplify their convoluted approach'
the authors claim that people use soils in different wavs in part !
because of environmental factors, genetic predispositions', and culf
tural inheritance. Besides the tenuous evidence, 12 the notions th
they propound are misleading and politically reactionary. Imagi
attributing soil degradation through warfare, incinerators, plantations
and roadways to the combined effects of human genetic predispo-
sition, cultural traditions, and environmental forces bevond human
control. These kinds of arguments resurface in some respects in th-
latest attempt to address human influences by way of the concept \
Anthropocene, which has recently stimulated some rethinking about
humans' role in pedogenesis. For instance, Stiles (2012) makes the
startling claim that

[i]t is well-known that different cultures have evolved in response to prevailing
environmental conditions, which are also forcing factors in soil formation
thus, it is easy to see that equivalent cultures developed on similar soil type]
despite wide geographic separation ... The uniqueness of cultures drawn from
the land is less notable in the Anthropocene, as most people are now far-
removed from the close relationship with the natural surroundings that shaped
cultural knowledge. F

Soils and Their Classification

Notwithstanding the bold (but possibly more interesting) notion
that the Anthropocene started only some decades ago, it would
be interesting to know what the author thinks are the conditions
t0 which Anthropocene societies now respond (if they presumably
also evolve). Apparently, such environmental changes as rising fre-
quencies of high-magnitude hurricanes or diminished UV-ray pro-
tection from ozone layer disruptions have no bearing whatsoever on
Anthropocene societies. Then again, according to this view, there is
no difference between, say, Lakota and Ukrainian societies, since both
evolved out of Chernozems. What is more, modern Anthropocene
gatherer-hunter, pastoralist, and agrarian systems are indistinguishable
from each other and from industrialized versions. And the evolu-
tion of polities like the Roman and the Inka Empires is the result
of such a vast number of soil types as to make the argument truly
unassailable.

It is unfortunate that soil scientists' attempts to include and analyze
social processes tend to skip the bulk of empirical evidence, disregard-
ing social science research and theory. For instance, in the above-cited
work by Amundson and Jenny, the authors could have addressed
how changes in pedogenic factors affect soil formation through both
environmental processes, such as increased aridity (regional climate
change), and social processes, such as the invasion of capitalist col-
onizer societies in the Great Plains (changes in organism impacts).
Soil scientists have no difficulty in spotting the first, but the latter
social processes remain beyond their purview. The more serious work
of studying actually existing social relations and their effects on soils
has instead been done by social scientists, but with a commensurate
lack of attentiveness to soil specificity and dynamics (see Chapter 6).

Thus, soil scientists' quandary regarding the status of human con-
tributions to soil formation should be seen as an artifact of inadequate
social analysis and/or lack of interest in the copious work of social
scientists. Nevertheless, the problem of humans' status relative to
pedogenesis could still be seen as technical in character. There would
just need to be clarification about criteria regarding what counts as
minor or major human impact relative to other soil-forming factors
and systematizing impact according to type and degree. This is being
addressed to some extent (e.g., Bryant and Galbraith 2003; Weinberg
2012 ). But in the end there remains a fundamental flaw resulting from
soil scientists' omission of relations of power and social context. Soil
scientists presume societies to be isolated from each other and all peo-
ple in them as virtually the same, with the same impacts on soils.
Perhaps such scientists might start understanding the importance of

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

social specificity if they were accused of having the same impact on
soils as the head of a nearby agribusiness or industrial plant.

Categories like Anthrosol (long-term farming influence with hori-
zon development) or Technosol (short-term, recent, industrial influ-
ence, with little or no horizon development), and other such attempts
to integrate human impact in soil formation explanations, fall short
on accuracy relative to actually existing varieties of social systems 13
and support a view that humans are separate from the rest of nature
(Bullock and Gregory 1991; Capra et al. 2013; Effland and Pouyat
1997; Meuser 2010; IUSS Working Group WRB 2007; USDA2006),
rather than viewing human impact as transforming and being trans-
formed by wider ecological as well as soil processes. Making the
uniqueness of human impact into a basis for classifying a soil implies
negligible or no human impact for other soils, an untenable proposi-
tion by at least some soil scientists' reckoning (Certini and Scalenghe
2006; Schaetzl and Anderson 2006, 318-320). Even in situations
of overwhelming human-derived effects, like heavy metal pollution,
other organisms, such as anecic earthworms (Lumbricus terrestris)]
can play a determinant role in the actual mobility of heaw metals
within soils (Ruiz, Alonso-Azcarate, and Rodriguez 2011;' Sizmur
et al. 2011). Reducing soil development to what a single organism
does is therefore misleading. Worse, it creates an implicit dichotomy
whereby some societies are accorded soil-forming factor status, while
other societies, by default, become part of "natural" soils. Bv clinging
to the above-described assumptions and omissions, soil scientists rein-
force the internally inconsistent capitalist colonizer ideology of nature,
whereby people are thought of as outside or part of nature according
to political convenience (Smith 1990).

It is, in short, gratuitous to divide soils into anthropogenic and
"natural" categories. Instead, nomenclature could be developed that
rerers to actual human impact and, possibly, specifies the types of
social relations behind it. To clarify, there can be no direct rela- 1
tionship between social system and soil formation, because human
impact is but one soil-forming factor, different forms of human
impact can be superimposed one on the other over time, and dif- I
ferent social systems can have similar impacts on soils. In anv case I
the inclusion of social relations would go bevond the scope of soil
formation explanations and soil classification, but such an approach I
which would need much study even to consider the multiple-scaled
spatio-temporal processes and to configure appropriate scale-specific
precision for social categories used, could provide the more politi-
cally aware and socially critical appraisal of soil formation processes

Soils and Their Classification

necessary to establish context-sensitive ways of promoting ecologi-
cally attuned egalitarianism. Identifying social relations tied to human
impact would, regardless, force soil scientists to stop hiding behind
a facade of objectivity and neutrality when it comes to human
impact.

Such a more socially informed classification system and, implicitly,
pedogenic model, need not involve an overhaul of existing taxa. For
instance, the term Anthrosol, in the FAO system, could be replaced
with an existing applicable term, such as Regosol (soil in unconsol-
idated material with little horizon development), a default category
for soils difficult to classify. The term already presumes specific ranges
of parent material and climate influence, but more ranges could
be included for multiple forms of human impact over time (e.g.,
organic additions over centuries, followed by agrochemical inputs
over decades). Sub-categories could be devised to specify whether it
was affected by a single type of human influence (e.g., predominant
forms of organic materials added, type of tillage). This requires much
more careful and in-depth study (and expense) that relies on mul-
tiple forms of knowledge (not just of the formal scientific variety),
but it would provide much more information toward assessing the
degree of human involvement in soil formation without reducing soils
to human impact or differentiating human impact according to "arti-
ficial" or "natural." This would give an eco-social twist to the basic
notion that "without having a firmly based model of soil formation
there can be no meaningful classification" ( Paton, Humphrevs, and
Mitchell 1995,9).

Classifying Soils

Like defining soil, classification systems partially reflect a society in
which they are forged. The assessment of and even categories for soils
are linked to the sort of society and environments in which soil sci-
entists have lived and grown up. One sign of this is the existence of
numerous scientific classification systems that, with the exception of
the FAO system, are typically national in scope, as if soils obeyed polit-
ical boundaries or government administrative units. These national
systems often show gaps in the capacity to account for soil types that
do not exist within national boundaries. In this way, scientific soil clas-
sification demonstrates both social and environmental specificity or
limits (Gerrard 2000; Yaalon and Berkowicz 1997). 14 The political
process here is the reproduction of national state ideology through
the implicit concept of nationally bounded soils.

32 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

It is therefore emphatically not a central problem of soi]
classification that there is "No single classification [that] can equally
serve all who seek to study and obtain sustenance from soil" (Buol
2003, 3). Buol (2003, 7-9) distinguishes between analytical, political,
economic, managerial, and ecological needs that guide the making
of soil categories. As useful as it is to be aware of a diversity of
interests, it is of greater significance to investigate how these differ-
ent interests arise from within a social system. Without doing this,
we miss the underlying reasons that motivate soils being classified in
particular ways and so we cannot explain why or how classification
systems change and/or end up trumping others. Diverse soil classi-
fication systems, rather than indicate various audiences, reflect, often
subtly, social contradictions and tensions. There can be a sharp con-
flict between understanding how a soil should relate to the rest of
its ecosystem and the uses to which humans want to subject a soil.
This distinction translates into our knowledge of soils in terms of
studying how they function, with or without human intervention,
and assuming a particular hierarchy for the best uses of a soil. In fact^
an ecosystem understanding of soils already implies a set of priorities
regarding the most appropriate uses of soils. There is no politically
neutral classification system. 15

Politics in Classifying

One illustration is the shaping of soil science concepts and applications
through changing social relations of power in Hungary (Engel-Di
Mauro 2006). Over the course of various political-economic shifts,
particular assumptions emerged in soil science regarding the sub-
ject/object of analysis (e.g., the identity of the farmer), the definition
of legitimate evidence (e.g., what soils are to be investigated), and
methodology. Thus, although mainly peasant women used wetland
soils to gather foods for subsistence, such soils were not recognized
as such until they could be used toward lucrative ends, dominated by
male farmers. With the state-socialist regime came an explicit reduc-
tion of soils to capital. Subsistence farmland, largely used by women
and elderly men, was then systematically excluded from soil survey,
classification, and monitoring.

In the US context, Buol illustrates the political interests involved in
wetland soils policy, from advocating drainage in the 1950s to conser-
vation by the 1990s. But does not this historical change in policy an
in economic valuation affect the analytical needs of soil scientists in

Soils and Their Classification

the study of wetland soils? Does it not affect how soils in wetlands are
managed? Does it not affect how soil scientists have come to view soils
as part of ecological interactions affected by humans? It was not until
after the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 that an inventory of
soils associated with wetlands was carried out as part of the National
Wetlands Inventory of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The result
was the introduction and elaboration of the concept of "hydric soils"
(Mausbach and Barker 2001). This analytical category did not exist
until after a political change in society brought into focus a concern for
wetlands and the environment generally. Moreover, widespread wet-
land drainage before the 1970s destroyed many of what came to be
known as hydric soils. 16 Comprehension of wetland soils has not been
helped by the reduction in their extent. Clearly, political change affects
and may even direct soil scientists' analyses. Wetland soil classification
might seem apolitical or detached from society until one excavates
the priorities ensconced within definitions, descriptions, classifications,
and evaluations.

These case studies, besides showing how the foundations of soil
science are enmeshed in politics, indicate that scientific experts do
not necessarily wilfully formulate concepts and terms to dissemble any
ulterior motives. The problem is that prevalent views are taken for
granted. Without taking into account that the biophysical also entails
a social understanding, there will continue to be a reinforcement of
socially predominant ideologies, a passively political act. The problems
of identifying soils, defining them, classifying them, and explaining
their formation and development are not resolved by clarity, system-
aticity, and consistency alone, although they help. They must also
involve critical awareness that definitions, categories, models, and
explanations are not neutral. Knowing what a definition excludes can
be as important as expressing its content. Naming something a soil
reflects not only the characteristics of a variable mineral -organic pro-
cess, but also socially specific perspectives of ways of sensing the world.
Similarly, the making of categories for soil classification is an undertak-
ing often guided by prevailing assumptions, as when capitalist farming
is tacitly taken as the standard.

The inescapably social aspect of ascribing meanings or definitions
to soils does not imply the impossibility of a definition or catego-
rization that is less socially assuming or exclusive. By contextualizing
and critiquing scientific soil knowledge, there can be more inclusive
ecological and social understandings that at least avoid reinforcing
repressive ideologies. Issues such as when something is a soil are

Ecology,

Soils,

and the Left

instead taken for granted by many and implicitly left to experts ( usually
soil scientists) to decide. But the experts themselves are inconsistent
on what a soil is and they introduce sometimes politically reactionary
elements in their definitions, taxonomies, and soil -formation models.
These should all be reason enough for leftists to take an active role
in the biophysical sciences, rather than just critiquing them from the
outside or relying on expert knowledge.

Chapter 3

Soil Properties and the
Political Aspects of Soil
Quality

As argued in Chapter 2, soil knowledge systems are context-specific,
but they overlap because soils also exist independently of society.
Associations of interacting organic and mineral materials, organisms,
air, and water (i.e., soils) occur independently of how we explain
them. Explananda are anyway not reducible to their explanantia. The
biophysical sciences cross social contexts, even as they are socially
constructed. Besides there being no single version of science, the
biophysical sciences should not be conflated with Western European
ideological predominance since they are the historical product of
the workings of different interacting social systems and people-
environment relations. In this work, mainstream scientific views about
the environment, including soils, are used and placed under scrutiny
because they form the basis for global comparisons and the backbone
of soil knowledge generally, even among the most ardent critics of
"Western" science, who do not jettison, for example, studies on soil
erosion or climate change on account of the studies' social provenance
(see also Blaikie 1999). With such understandings of science, soils can
be defined as both land and, to a limited extent, subaqueous phe-
nomena comprised of bound mineral and organic materials, together
with living organisms, water, and air. They are weathered mineral
and/or organic material organized in layers (horizons) and charac-
terized by the binding of mineral and organic substances, possibly at
molecular scale (the clay-humus complex). Soils form by the addition,

36 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

loss, movement, and transformation of materials. Over time, soils a J
created with the pivotal involvement of organisms, including people
alongside other major influences, namely climate, topography par
ent material, and relatively low frequency high-impacting phenomen
(earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, meteorite bombardment, and the
like). Interactions among and change within these factors produce soi
diversity (Phillips 2001b).

What follows is an overview of major soil properties (biologicj
physical, and chemical) because they form the basis for evaluating the
state of a soil (soil quality) and hence whether a soil is deemed to be
degraded (a topic taken up in Chapter 4). The properties of a soil may
develop without any influences from human activities, but soil eval-
uation is obviously done by people, who have ideas about how soils
ought to be used, for what ends. These ideas come from interactions in
society, not just from interactions with soils. Soil qualities are formu-
lated and judged accordingly, regardless of whether those involved in
such formulations and judgments are aware of this. In fact, a recurring
problem is that they are at most superficially aware of the social aspect
of their work. Soil degradation must therefore include a studv of the
social context out of which it is defined. Determining or even coming
up with the concept of soil degradation points to a contrast with a sta-
ble or functioning soil. And it matters a great deal which people make
such contrasts, their social position, and the conditions under which
they work. As Blaikie and Brookfield (1987, 1) remind us, degrada-
tion entails ranking and this "implies social criteria which relate land to
its actual or possible use." As shown below, the social criteria tend to
be dissembled through the development of parameters focused on soil
properties, which are used as a means to establish standards of evalua-
tion. Even on their own terms, such standards, as some soil scientists
point out, reflect the regionally specific environmental circumstances
and are poorly applicable to other places. Assumptions about soci-
ety typically left unscathed, tend to deny the existence of relations
of dominauon and take capitalism for granted. Leftist works on soil
degradation have been rare and confined overwhelming- to critique
Alternatives have so far been wanting, so a reconceptualization of
soil quality toward an egalitarian, hence anti-capitalist alternative is]
proposed at the end of this chapter.

Soil Properties

Out of the interactions over time between climate, organisms, par-
ent material, topography, and high-magnitude events and through
material additions, losses, transformations, and translocations soils

Soil Properties and Soil Quality

develop distinctive characteristics or properties and an overall appear-
ance (morphology) — including a vertical succession of layers (hori-
zons). Herein only a few of each type of characteristics is described
and that are useful in assessing whether soils are degraded. Typically,
these properties are divided according to whether they are primarily
biological, physical, or chemical. It should be however kept in mind
that all these properties are interrelated in one way or another. Their
separation is for analytical purposes, to facilitate the interpretation of
a large array of attributes.

Biological Properties

Biological properties refer to the species composition of soils and to
the activities and interactions of soil-dwelling organisms. These can be
quantified through biomass measurements, microscope-aided counts,
respiration (total C0 2 evolved from microbial populations), assays of
genetic material (nucleic acids) and enzymes, total organic carbon,
biodiversity, and other forms of measurement (Thies 2006). Some
soils, such as in arid and tundra environments, have fewer organ-
isms, but in many parts of the world, soils teem with life. The level
of biodiversity and soil-organism activity and functions are affected,
sometimes only indirectly, by factors like (micro-) climate, topogra-
phy (e.g., a soil at a valley bottom may be frequently waterlogged),
and the effects of above-ground organisms (including us). Under a
temperate forest, for instance, the number of organisms can climb
to tens of millions per cubic meter, rivalling tropical rainforests and
coral reefs (Giri et al. 2005). Their importance has been appreci-
ated for some time. Charles Darwin ( 1881 ) even dedicated an entire
volume to earthworms, but not until the last few decades have soil
scientists started concentrating on soil biota (Wall, Fitter, and Paul
2005).

Soils are then underground ecosystems with specific features, such
as a "labyrinthine pore network" (Young and Ritz 2005, 32) and high
functional redundancy of species owing to an abundance of spaces out
of predators' reach (Bardgett, Yeates, and Anderson 2005 ). Organisms
in soils vary in sizes and some, such as arthropods and rodents, do
not live solely in soils and can be quite large. Soil-dwelling organisms
consist of bacteria (eubacteria and arcaheobacteria), fungi, protozoa,
slime molds, flora (e.g., algae), and fauna (e.g. nematodes, mites, and
earthworms). In one way or another, they all contribute to producing
and/or developing soils, imparting characteristics such as how well
mineral particles are bound together or the degree of organic matter
(OM) breakdown (Magdoff and van Es 2000, 13-20).

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

oil

Broadly stated, soil organisms together, as part of a subterranean
ecosystem, accomplish the following: (1) the breakdown of varf.
ous organic and mineral materials (including compounds harmful
to us), (2) the mineralization (conversion to minerals) and move-
ment (cycling) of matter within and between soils and from soils to
other environments (e.g., cycling and converting between different
forms of nitrogen and carbon to and from the atmosphere, bodies
of water, above-ground ecosystems), (3) the mixing of soil materi-
als and the creation of spaces between solid soil particles ( aeration),
(4) the addition of organic acids and carbon dioxide to the so|
and (5) the cycling and storage of nutrients. These are crucial coj
tributions soil organisms make that not only determine manv soi
characteristics, but also enable the functioning and influence the pro-
cesses and characteristics of above-ground ecosystems (Bardgett 2005-
Gobat, Aragno, and Matthey 2004). Soil ecosystems are deeply inter-
woven with soil physical and chemical properties, which provide the
habitat, also created through dynamic and mutually constitutive inter-
actions between organisms and the physical soil environment (e g
Ouedraogo, Mando, and Brussaard 2006).

Physical Properties

Physical properties are composed of air, water, and solid particles!
a portion of which is derived from organisms themselves as OA1
Among the major soil physical traits are total depth, colors, tex-
ture, structure, consistency, density- (known as bulk density), porosity,
permeability, temperature and moisture ranges, and the soil parti-
cles' arrangements at the macro- and microscopic level (soil fabric
and micromorphology), amounts of different kinds of oxide and
oxy-hydroxide minerals (e.g., different compounds of iron and alu-
minum), concretions and cemented layers, amounts of carbonates, as
well as the predominant kinds of minerals present or mineralogy (for
an overview, see Ellis and Mellor 1995; Magdoflf and van Es 2000-
Schaetzl and Anderson 2005).

Total depth is taken to be from the soil surface to the rooting limifl
or to bedrock or sediment. This varies according to context, but it I
is also questionable whether rooting depth should be employed as J
criterion, since many microorganisms can thrive beyond the rooting
zone. Soil color is quite an important description to note, as it can
immediately give an impression about, for instance, levels of organic
material (darker hues) or of the presence of different kinds of iron
compounds (reddish, brownish, yellowish hues). Texture refers to the

Soil Properties and Soil Quality

rrfative amounts of mostly silicate mineral particles of different aver-
age diameter, 1 called clay, silt, sand. 2 The clay or colloidal fraction
(<2|xm) is the one that most reacts with other substances, binding
n0 t just with OM, but also attracting ionic forms of compounds and
atoms, including plant nutrients (e.g., potassium) and trace elements
(e.g., arsenic). Clays are in this way like temporary nutrient storage
areas. They also furnish elements, including nutrients, as they are bro-
ken down and/or transformed through many types of mechanical
and chemical reactions. Because of their variable internal structure,
some clay minerals (e.g., montmorillonite) are much more reactive
than others (e.g., kaolinite), though not as much as OM, so that
there can be considerable differences in soil fertilitv connected to clay
mineralogy (Gerrard 2000, 22-29).

Structure is the shape and direction of soil particle clumps (aggre-
gates), which give stability to soils. These aggregates are made possible
largely by a combination of clay particles mutually attracted by ions
of more than one charge (e.g., Ca 2 ~) and fixed through organic sub-
stances and even living microbes (for aggregates smaller than 250 |im)
and of OM serving as glue (for larger aggregates). Larger aggregates
require a constant replenishment of OM, which is broken down by
microorganisms (Chotte 2005). The degradation of OM without any
replacement can weaken structure and make soils more vulnerable to
erosive forces like wind and water. Consistency is related to struc-
ture in that it describes the result of subjection of aggregates to some
manipulation such as pressure (e.g., degree of brittleness, plasticity).
It is a function of texture and clay mineralogy and indicates aggregate
resistance and resilience level.

Bulk density (mass per unit volume) gives an idea about how well
water and air can flow and the relative ease or difficulty of rooting,
among other processes. The density of individual soil particles varies
tremendously. It can range from 5.2 for magnetite to 2.6 gem -3 for
feldspars and as low as 0.9 gem -3 for OM. Higher bulk density indi-
cates less total air space and can be a sign of soil compaction and
slower permeability. It is hence closely related to porosity, which is
the total air space (pores) between solid particles, and to permeability,
which refers to how easily water and air can infiltrate (Gerrard 2000,
29-31 ). There is often an inverse relationship between porosity and
permeability because higher porosity tends to occur with a greater
number of micro-pores (<0.2[±m), which, for example, hold water
too tightly for many organisms. Porosity' is then typically inversely
related to texture, meaning that the finer the texture is, the greater
the porosity (total pore volume). Smaller particles have greater surface

40 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

area per unit volume, but have smaller pore spaces between the
Coarser (e.g., sandy) texture typically leads to larger pores, but less
overall porosity because there will be fewer pores in total, even thou
they will be bigger. 3 The bigger the pores are and the more they
interconnected, the more that water and air can move through a soil
So, it is not just the pore diameter or average distance between por
that counts, but also how well pores are connected to each other
this can be determined by micro-morphological (analysis under micro!
scope) or inferential methods ( Jungerius 1964; Schaetzl and Anderso
2005,22-31).

Chemical Properties

There is much dynamism to soils, besides the lively bustling of organ-
isms, and that is due to a variety of chemical reactions. Many occur
taster than our eyes can blink but their consequences accumulate to
the point of changing soil characteristics. Soil chemical reactions hap-
pen both within and between soil aggregates and water. Much of what
is understood as soil fertility has to do with chemical properties. The
major ones are OM, pH, cation exchange capacity (CEC), buffering
capacity, salinity, sodicity, carbonate content, and the levels of iron and
aluminum oxides and hydroxides.

OM is a key ingredient, even if often oscillating between only 1
and 6 percent of soil volume and typically restricted to the upper-
most horizon. OM constitutes both a physical and chemical trait, b
it is not so much its occurrence in a soil that makes a difference
much as the chemical processes that it implies and enables and the
often beneficial characteristics it imparts. There are two phases to OM:
the residue added following the shedding of material from organisms
(e.g., fallen leaves) or the death and decomposition of organisms, and
the well-decomposed component incorporated into soils, or humus.
As organisms decompose OM, nutrients like nitrogen and phospho-
rus are released into soil water, which is the main conduit for plant
nutrition by way of roots. The less decomposable material builds up
over time, sometimes forming layers of organic materials on the sur-,
face. In the case of more resistant material, it is accumulated as humus,
a term that covers many amorphous and microscopic organic sub-
stances that often bind strongly to clay particles. As humus forms,
C0 2 and organic acids are released and accelerate the weathering of
minerals, which is one way in which nutrients reach soil water. Humus
can last for centuries and serve as long-term storage for many nutri-
ents, as well as carbon. In this way soils play a major role in climate

Soil Properties and Soil Quality

change as long-term carbon sinks and, when OM is exposed at the soil
surface and broken down, as carbon emitters. Because it creates many
pores per unit volume, OM improves water infiltration and also acts
as a sponge, raising the water-holding capacity (especially in sandy
soils) through its very high specific surface area (total surface area
per unit mass). This latter characteristic is also what makes it a large
storage component for nutrients (high CEC) and a frequently effec-
tive buffer against heavy metal contaminants and, with its lipophilic
fraction, organic pollutants like PCBs. Finally, among other contribu-
tions, OM reduces raindrop impact (decreasing runoff and flooding),
favors the stability of aggregates (soil structure), thereby countering
erosive forces, and provides multiple soil habitats (contributing to rais-
ing; biodiversity). It is therefore tough to exaggerate the importance
of soil OM (Brussaard and Juma 1995; Duxbury, Smith, and Doran
1989; Gobat, Aragno, and Matthey 2004; Magdoff and van Es 2000 ).

Among the most important factors governing soil chemical reac-
tions is pH. 4 Riding on pH is whether and what kinds of nutrients
or other elements or compounds (e.g., heavy metals) will be read-
ily available for organisms (mainly in soil water). Acidity, or low pH,
for example, creates the conditions for many heavy metals, especially
aluminum (e.g., Al 3+ ), toxic to many organisms, to get into soil water
and thereby into above-ground plants and soil organisms. Some major
plant nutrients become less available with changes in pH either to
alkaline or acid values. Nitrogen used by plants, for instance, comes
in the forms of nitrate (NO J) and ammonium (NHJ). When condi-
tions are acid (pH<6), NH^-N predominates, which makes it more
difficult for plants to obtain other nutrients like potassium (K + ) and
calcium (Ca 2 ~ ). Phosphates (POj~) tend to bind with Ca 2 " in alkaline
conditions and be less available to plants. Because many soil organisms
cannot cope well under acid conditions, fungi tend to become more
prevalent with low pH. As a result, soil and above-ground ecosystem
composition can vary according to pH (McBride 1994; Sparks 2003;
Sumner and Noble 2003).

Soils are quite a lively labyrinth. Elements and compounds migrate
continuously, as implied when discussing pH (e.g., hydrogen moves
onto and away from soil particles) and mentioning root absorption
of soil water. Microbes, fungi, and other organisms also move ele-
ments and compounds about by ingesting or expelling them and by
enabling the mobility of elements and compounds by breaking down
or transforming materials. However, the elements and compounds'
own characteristics also influence where they end up. They have, for
example, different sizes and often exist as ions, possessing a charge,

42 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

either positive (cation; e.g., K~, potassium) or negative (anion; e.g.
NO J, nitrate). 5 This is important because charge affects whether el e '
ments or compounds will bind with or dissociate from OM, clay S)
and other minerals, or typically clay-humus complexes, which usu-
ally have positive or negative charges on their surfaces. Cations have
greater affinity for and tend to migrate towards negatively charged
surfaces, which repel anions. When bound to minerals or organic
substances, cations and anions remain attached (adsorbed) until con-
ditions change, like a temporary drop in pH or the addition of ions
in the soil water. Then they may drop back into the soil water (des-
orption) and be taken up by a root or fungal filament (hypha) or by a
microorganism, which induces the movement of other ions from the
humus, clay-humus, or mineral surfaces to the soil water. Or cations,
for instance, can serve to attract other ions and act as a bridge (ligand)
to the organic or mineral substrate (e.g., linking anions like PO:p to
an otherwise negatively charged surface, which would reject anions). |

The constant interplay of centripetal and centrifugal forces (espe-
cially through microorganisms) and the characteristics of soil particles
determine to a large extent the kinds and amounts of ions that will
be stored in soils. This chemical property is called exchange capac-
ity and is divided into Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC) and Anion
Exchange Capacity (AEC). It is the pH-dependent capacity of soil
particles to retain cations and anions in general while exchanging
them for other cations and anions in the soil water. Exchange capai
ity is typically measured as milliequivalents (meq) or in centimols of|
charge (cmol c ) per kg of oven-dried soil (the two units coincide in
numeric expression). 6 The amount of ions that can be held mainly
depends on pH and the combined specific surface areas and extent
of chemical reactivity of OM and minerals (i.e., the soil particles)!*
Usually, it is CEC that gets the most attention because most plant
nutrients are in the form of cations so that CEC can indicate soil fer-
tility. CEC, for a given pH, can also be useful in estimating the degree
to which a soil will prevent cations like many heavy metals from get-
ting into soil water readily and move downward into groundwater.
Noteworthy is the tendency for CEC to rise with higher OM content
and/or more reactive clay minerals like montmorillonite (Buol et afl
2003; Ellis and Mellor 1995; Gerrard 2000; Schaetzl and Anderson
2005).

CEC affects soils' buffering capacity, which is the degree to which
a soil can withstand the addition of acids or alkaline materials without
drastic changes in pH. The higher the CEC the greater the buffering
capacity and the more that acid or basic material is required to cause

Soil Properties and Soil Quality

a change in pH. Exceeding buffering capacity often means the occur-
rence of imbalances, at low pH, between cations that are exchangeable
(on or very near the soil particle surfaces) and the cations in the soil
water. This is when hydrogen and aluminum cations will start kick-
ing off other cations, usually plant nutrients like calcium, which then
move downward in soil water (leach) and away from plant roots' reach
( McBride 1994; Sparks 2003).

Buffering capacity can be overwhelmed by the accumulation of
•jfcaline materials. These compounds, if concentrated, can alter soil
properties like CEC and soil structure. Among the most impacting
ar e water-soluble salts and sodium. 8 Salt content is measured as salin-
itv estimated by electrical conductivity and elemental analysis. Some
soils accumulate high amounts of sodium (Na~ ), which can be toxic to
most plants, can reduce air and water movement, and can also destroy
soil structure (it is a very effective dispersive agent). Sodium levels are
quantified as sodicity, which is the percentage of sodium relative to
CEC. The occurrence of high salt and/or sodium concentrations is
typical of arid zones, where evapotranspiration is high and rainfall is
not enough for salts to be dissolved and dispersed (Buol et al. 2003;
Hillel 2008; Szabolcs 1998).

The relative abundance of carbonates (CO3" ) and hydroxides and
oxides of iron and aluminum also rank among major chemical soil
properties contributing to overall CEC and buffering capacity. The
first, besides affecting salinity, contributes to moderating pH and tying
up many heavy metals and certain nutrients, especially phosphate, ren-
dering them less available to organisms, including plants. Hydroxides
and oxides of iron and aluminum also contribute to this process ol
preventing many heavy metals from getting into soil water. Iron based
compounds, through their color, can additionally give clues as to the
state of a soil. For example, reddish or rust spots are a sign of greater
oxvgen flow (good aeration, oxidation) and bluish and/or greenish
ones often reflect the opposite (poor air and water flow, reduction).
One can estimate the usual depth of a water table by noting the depth
where these kinds of spots abound. In contrast, aluminum based com-
pounds, among other things, can reduce bulk density and raise CEC,
depending on the compound and its relative amounts ( McBride 1994;
Sparks 2003).

These are but some of the main characteristics of soils. The per-
mutations of such properties can give rise to differing characteristics,
horizons, and, ultimately, a great variety of soil types. Many of these
characteristics are interrelated, so it is not always necessary to take
stock of all possible soil properties imaginable, especially when there

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

are constraints over how much lab analysis or field inspection can be
done. For example, if a soil is rich in carbonates, the expected p{j
would be on the alkaline side (high pH) and salinity would also be
expected to be relatively high, depending on how long the soil has
been exposed to precipitation (which typically dissolves and flushes
down salts, like carbonates). Yet it must also be borne in mind that
soil properties are dynamic and prone to change, some over minutes
or fractions of seconds (e.g., cation exchange), some over years to
decades (e.g., OM, structure, and pH), and some others over cen-
turies and millennia (e.g., texture, mineralogy). In other words, soils
have intrinsic properties that emerge during the course of their for-
mation and these properties are interrelated and change at different
speeds (Markewitz and Richter 2001 ). Human impact can modify and
accentuate soil formation and the rate of change of some soil char-
acteristics, but, unless entire soils are removed, people cannot alone
determine the threshold conditions and the set of interactions occur-
ring at multiple time scales that produce soil characteristics, not even
for industrially produced soils.

Soil Quality According to Institutional
Scientific Accounts

Soil degradation is a relative term, predicated on comparisons with
what are understood as stable or functioning soils. Conceptually, it
is underlain by soil quality- notions (e.g., Lai et al. 2004, 18), which
are therefore important to examine critically because they imply stan-
dards against which to judge whether a soil is degraded. For many
soil scientists, soil quality is good when three broad and intertwined
functions are fulfilled: supporting organisms above and below ground
(some limit this to plant growth); processing exchanges of matter (by
filtering, movement, cycling, buffering, and altering substances); and
providing habitat, thereby enabling biodiversity. When any of these
functions is hampered, overall soil quality decreases (Blum, Warkentin,
and Frossard 2006, 4-6; Kimpe and Warkentin 1998, 4-5). How-
ever, the vagueness behind such concepts (e.g. soils as support
all organisms always? ) and the wide range of relatively innocuo
forms of human impact allow for greater interpretive variety th
assumed.

Many indicators are used to evaluate the state of soils and th
can be quantified and combined to calculate an index of soil q
ity (see Bone et al. 2012 for a thorough review). The paramete
often regarded as of primary significance are divided according to th

Soil Properties and Soil Quality

main soil properties (biological, physical, and chemical). OM content
is associated with all soil property categories in different ways and so
its measurement is of central importance (Doran and Parkin 1996).
Biological indicators include such data as earthworm counts, respira-
tion (measurements of C0 2 emitted by organisms from within soils),
microbial diversity, and nitrogen that is potentially bioavailable (min-
eralizable). Chemical indicators are covered by such estimates as pH,
nutrient content, CEC, and electrical conductivity. Physical indica-
tors encompass water-holding capacity, the stability of soil aggregates
(structure), bulk density, porosity, and infiltration capacity. These indi-
cators can be weighted according to their respective preponderant
influence in specific contexts (e.g. pH values are more indicative of
soil quality change in sandy soils, which usually have less buffering
capacity). They are measured to monitor lone;-term, rather than sea-
sonal trends and are founded on reference or standard values so that
change can be detected and compared. The indicator values are based
on the comparison of three conditions for a given soil: ( 1 ) its "natural"
status, (2) its changed character due to prior human use, and (3) its
alteration with recent or current human impact (Andrews, Karlen,
and Cambardella 2004; Doran 2002; Seybold, Dick, and Pierce 2001;
Schjonning, Elmholt, and Christensen 2004).

Putting Soil Quality in Context

Given the great diversity- of soils and of social contexts, no single set
of characteristics can capture the state of a soil, relative to its eco-
logical functioning and (tacitly and problematically assumed) social
parameters. Some soils can be expected to contain a lot of OM, like
those developed under grassland, but it would be inappropriate to
expect the same out of other soils formed under coniferous forest.
Forest soils with relatively low pH and OM may be fine for one soci-
ety, where gathering wild foods, hunting, and timber extraction play
a prominent role, and a hindrance to another more agrarian society,
where higher soil OM and pH would be more beneficial to growing
crops. These banal observations should be sufficient warning against
assessing soil quality as if independent of people's use of or ideas about
soils. Yet these are exactly the assumptions that underlie definitions of
soil degradation and they converge with the often implicit subordina-
tion of soil concepts under an industrialized, profit-oriented farming
perspective. 9 These assumptions even imbue explanations in social sci-
ence explanations. For instance, inadequate soil fertility for vegetable
farming, instead of capitalist pressures on farmers, is invoked as a main

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

cause for a switch to chicken raising in the Delmarva Peninsula (US)
the early 1900s (Striffler 2006). As discussed in Chapter 6, leftists h
not been immune to this poor line of reasoning, especially regardi
issues of soil fertility. The pervasiveness of notions of soil quality an
its political ramifications remain underappreciated. For soil quality t 0
be useful, it must be placed in context, both historical and geograp
cal. In this manner, soils can be assessed in ways that can be applied in
diverse situations.

Critique of Existing Official Soil Quality Concepts

Inspecting technical discourse critically can help expose social assump.
tions and political agendas (Engel-Di Mauro 2006). Mainstream vi
of soil quality, for instance, have changed from a focus on conventio
maximum crop yield to regarding soils through a more ecologi
perspective (e.g., USDA-NRCS 2010). This more recent ecosvstem
oriented concept of soil quality has even gained institutional backin
as in the European Union (via the 2006 Soil Thematic Strategy) and
the U.S., where it is defined as "how well soil performs all of its fiin
tions now and how those functions are being preserved for future use
(USDA-NRCS 2010). This departs from the more detailed concep
proposed and evolving prior to and since its simplified restatement
within a branch of government. Earlier renditions focused on produc-
tivity (e.g. Fullen and Catt 2004, 2; Stocking 1995, 223 ) and saw soil
degradation as the "diminution of soil quality (and therebv its currenf
and potential productivity) and/or a reduction in its abilitv to be a
multi-purpose resource due both to natural and man-induced causes"
(Lai, Hall, and iMiller 1989, 51). This definition then shifted to "th<
decline in soil biomass productivity through adverse changes in nutri^
ent status, OM, structural stability, and concentrations of electrolytes
and toxic chemicals" (Lai and Stewart 1990, 331; see also Scherr
1999, 5). Doran and Parkin (1996, 11) opt instead for an environ
ment and health perspective to soil quality and introduce a bound
component, extending the definition of soil qualitv as:

berr
on-
iary

The continued capacity of soil to function as a vital living svstem, within
ecosystem and land-use boundaries, to sustain biological productivity, main-
tain the quality of air and water environments, and promote plant a
and human health.

Place-specificity is given its due, with human needs treated separately
and extended to dwelling requirements when soil quality is defined as

Soil Properties and Soil Quality

the capacity of a specific kind of soil to function within natural or managed
ecosystem boundaries to sustain plant and animal productivity, maintain or
enhance water and air quality, and support human health and habitation.

(Karlen et al. 1997,4 )

Finally, Lai et al. (2004, 18) view it more succinctly as "determined
by the interrelationships among soil properties, soil type, land use and
management," where apparendy land use and management simply
happen and require no further analysis. 10

Regardless of the respective weaknesses of these definitions of soil
quality, they contrast one another in ways that suggest a progressive
admission that humans are the ultimate protagonist in this pedological
play. It is not just any biological productivity, but productivity that also
promotes human health, and then finally the needs associated with
habitation, as if it could be independent of human health. Even the
spatial aspect is specified, so that it becomes evident that places have
some sort of extent (boundaries). Eventually, it is made evident that it
is all relative to a combination of decisions over what to use soils for
and what the soils themselves are like.

There are many problems with these views on soil quality and
they largely stem from subsuming political questions under exter-
nal biophysical processes. There is no relational understanding (high
soil quality for one species can be poor soil quality for another), no
discussion of the social context of soil quality knowledge produc-
tion, no consideration for the possibility of contradictions between
human species-specific needs (or even those of other species) and
overall biomass productivity, no explication about what count as legit-
imate uses of soil (who is to decide on land use and management, for
instance), no regard for conflicting soil uses, and no recognition of
boundaries as socially constructed rather than given.

Regarding the vagueness about organisms supported by soil func-
tions, there is an underlying tension on the inclusion of nonhuman
forces (organisms other than people also can degrade soils relative to
other organisms' needs) and whether ecological consequences should
be incorporated that are at best indirectly relevant to human well-
being. For example, the reduction of soil pH, under temperate humid
climates, is often more supportive of fungi and other acidity-tolerant
organisms. It seems inappropriate to understand soil acidification
solely as a form of degradation, although it certainly can be. It is
also curious that many other life forms (e.g., fungi, archaebacteria)
are excluded from those that are supposed to benefit from higher soil
quality. One need not resort to speciesism arguments to find problems

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

bio.

with the ways in which soil quality is currently conceived. Life form,
have survival needs that may diverge substantively. Allusions to bi
logical productivity- or ecosystems merely evade the issue of the sta
of soils being always relative to a type of societv and to the phy<
logical needs of a single (human) species (two aspects that may ai
contradict each other, especially in a capitalist mode of production) -
There is no attempt to confront the possibility of contradictions
between human uses and soil functions for the rest of an ecosystem
An example is the expansion of paved areas with the spread of indus
trial infrastructure that has the effect of sealing or destroying soils
and preventing alternative uses, such as farming. These are consider*
impacts leading to soil degradation, but one could argue that there
are inadequacies in the definition due to a lack of attention to social
processes (and implicit presuppositions of what is generally desirable
for society). For example, hospitals (support for human health), entail
the physical degradation of soils through similar outcomes of soil seal-
ing by way of buildings, roads, and parking lots. Another illustratioi
is supporting human habitation in the form of large housing com-
plexes with extensive soil sealing by asphalt and cement. This might
not sustain plant and animal productivity, but they do benefit huma
health (for some people more than others, when it comes to capital!
systems).

This brings in the issue of what constitutes legitimate use. Notions
of productivity are at times so narrowly conceptualized as to exclude
many communities' livelihoods (and values) based on different uses
of soils, such as gathering manoomin (wild rice, Zizania pahtstris)
m lacustrine coastal wetlands among the Ojibwa (Vennum 1988)
The productive potential of wetlands defined according to manoomin
harvests diverges considerably from productive potential relative tc
agrochemically intensive rice paddies. As for human needs and soil
quality more broadly, the example of human habitation can serve as
illustration. The human habitation of some people can be destruc-
tive of soils (e.g., blocks of flats), while that of other people (eg
huts made of local rapidly biodegradable materials) can be relatively
benign. To claim genericaUy that soil quality is to be supportive of
human habitation is to pretend away societal difference and political
questions about soil use. This is related to the matter of land use con-
flicts, which often involve soils. Some people are displaced and are
compelled to destroy soils to be able to have homes, but this is implic-
itly made unimportant in soil quality assessment, even if the socially
oppressive processes of forced displacement can be a main source of
soil degradation.

Soil Properties and Soil Quality

Finally the spatial extent of soil quality is typically treated in cava-
lier fashion. Some fashion boundaries out of ecosystems, a notoriously
arbitrary demarcation, and some out of existing land use, implying an
acceptance of the status quo. Some like to exacerbate the problem by
pretending that ecosystem and land-use boundaries happily coincide
(Karlen et al. 1997). These largely unrecognized problems demon-
strate that, to make sense of soil quality, social criteria (e.g., modes of
land use and distribution and the power relations subtending them)
must be included in the determination of indicators.

Political Assumptions and Ramifications in Soil Quality
Indicators

Technical constructs are not socially neutral. Presenting them as such
is deceptive, as shown regarding acceptable soil loss tolerance values,
or the T factor in soil erosion analysis (Blaikie 1985, 17). Perversely,
instead of favoring the development of socially critical awareness of
such indices, critiques of the T factor have spurred the development
of soil quality indices containing similarly questionable assumptions.
Indicators of low quality in one context become indicators of fine
quality in another. Consider the use of pH as soil quality indicator.
The USDA-NRCS (2011) have set the optimal pH range at 6.0-7.5,
which is a range useful for growing most temperate climate crops and
amenable to many grassland ecosystems. However, wetland soils, such
as bogs, and soils under often coniferous forests (e.g., Podzols) have
lower pH and nonetheless thrive as ecosystems. Similarly, OM content
cannot be judged according to a single standard. Some soils have little
OM because of high OM turnover, compared to many soils in tem-
perate environments (Tiessen, Cuevas, and Salcedo 1998). It would
be absurd to give a low soil quality score on account of characteristics
such soils cannot possibly possess. Sojka and Upchurch ( 1999, 1045-
1047) and Bouma (2004, 290-291) provide further examples of such
regional and taxonomic biases.

This issue, arguably, could be resolved by specifying the context in
which soil quality is being determined and making soil quality scores
specific to the area studied (see Stocking 2003). This does not resolve
the problem of conflicting interpretations, a conflict that should impel
scientists to honesty about their politics. To some extent, awareness
is rising over these problems, but any greater candor displayed rel-
ative to interpretation is not as yet commensurate with any greater
admission of political commitment. For example, comparing analy-
ses of stored samples from 60 years ago in California to results from

50 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

resampling, De Clerck, Singer, and Linden found an overall increase
in plant-available phosphorus. Siding openly with conventional farm,
ing, they "do not interpret the observed changes to indicate any
significant decline in soil quality" (De Clerck, Singer, and Lindert
2003, 226). The interpretational problem is presented as a matte
of either pollution (presumably of nearbv surface waters, leading to
eutrophication) or nutrient enrichment. The dichotomy, the authors
own artifice, ignores ecosystemic interconnects ty and social context
Since soil phosphorus enrichment can mean the degradation of irri-
gation water (even groundwater, as phosphorus is leached once soils
become phosphorus-saturated), the historical rise in plant-available
phosphorus is a concern even for conventional farming. Further com-
plicating the interpretation is the potential for manure applications
often used in organic farming, for high soil phosphorus levels (Whalen
and Chang 2001). It is not mineral fertilizer that should be at issue
but the authors' reductionism and mystification. One aspect is relative
to soil-specific processes (Bennett, Carpenter, and Caraco 2001- von
Wandruszka 2006). Rising plant-available phosphorus levels are'only
meaningful when compared to the amounts of phosphorus soils can
store, as influenced by pH, the abundance and types of clav minerals
and OM, and iron oxide and carbonate content, anion? other factors
that can also be altered by people (e.g., additions of lime to raise pH,
which can lead to enhancing phosphorus availability or reduce it, if
pH exceeds 7.3). In the case of the California study, the phosphorus
enrichment noted for the Southern and Central Coast regions (De
Clerck, Singer, and Lindert 2003, 228) may therefore not be a pos-
itive development even for conventional farming because the pH has
also increased to levels high enough (7.86 and 7.70 respectively) for
phosphorus to be in a form largely unavailable for crops.

It should be the least expected of soil scientists to connect soil qual-
ity determination to historically-specific soil properties and to wider
ecosystem processes. In the above example, this would translate into
linking soil phosphorus levels, organisms and nutrient cvcling and
water resources. But since soil quality enters the realm of land use,
which also influences some key soil properties (e.g., pH and OM),
there must also be due attention to social processes. Taking farm-
ing as a point of departure, as the above and manv other authors
do, is no neutral act. It precludes consideration of other kinds of
food-procurement, such as pastoralism or gathering-hunting Even
within farming, there are crucial differences. It is not just whether
there is nutrient enrichment. At issue is also, for example, what kind
of fertilizer management and what crops and amount of productivity

Soil Properties and Soil Quality

3 re assumed more useful. By interpreting increasing soil phosphorus
levels as showing long-term soil quality improvement in California,
the authors unabashedly align themselves with industrialized, capital-
intensive farming and the social system on which it rests. Using
manure from locally raised livestock, even when involving landlord-
based oppression, does not have the same social basis or extent of
damaging effects as mined mineral phosphorus, with its often impe-
rialistic and colonial underpinnings (such as the case of the Saharawi
struggle, involving Moroccan colonialism and US and French govern-
ment support; Lakhal 2012 ). The crop management scheme favored
by excessive phosphorus use is embroiled in a form of agriculture
geared towards profit-making, rather than feeding people, and this
is increasingly understood among some scientists (e.g., Bennett, Car-
penter, and Caraco 2001 ), who demonstrate not only the widespread
problem of eutrophication-inducing phosphate fertilizer use with
industrialized agriculture, but also the uneven phosphate application
according to economic standing (the wealthiest dumping or com-
pelling the dumping of the most phosphate on soils). In the context
of California, with a history of colonial conquest, genocide, and
land and water theft, whereby colonizers' farming methods ("conven-
tional agriculture") were imposed and eventually developed towards
farmworker-sapping profit-oriented agriculture (Lindsay 2012; Walker
2004), opting for one interpretation of plant-available phospho-
rus over another cannot be presented as mere technicality except
out of sheer ignorance about the kind of society in which one
lives.

Given the above, comparisons of soil quality scores must consider
the ecological and social context of the indicators and weigh such
scores as at least in part political questions. Such parameters are con-
sidered neither by institutions like the USDA-NRCS, nor by soil scien-
tists critical of soil quality indices. Yet even if the penchant for reducing
the world to the needs of temperate zone profit-oriented cereal crop-
ping systems were to be overcome, the problem remains with respect
to evaluating the effects of conflict over land use. To illustrate, when
cropland is turned into a pine and spruce plantation or into a wet-
land in a temperate humid area, pH can decline (acidification) after
several decades (Kirk 2004, 210; Pallant and Riha 1990). Arguably,
this cannot be said to be an issue of soil degradation because a new,
lower optimal pH range should be used to make the soil quality assess-
ment. Conversely, if a Podzol developed under coniferous forest were
to be used for growing cereal crops, the pH would need to be raised
and the soil quality assessment criteria should accordingly shift. Yet

52 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

the former example would likely count as acidification, while the latt
would be considered soil quality improvement in current soil degrada-
tion estimations. There are here already several problems that cannot
be resolved by invoking soil quality indicators. One is that basing soil
quality (at least partially) on the effects of prior soil use is a politj.
cal notion, something that Bouma (2004) among many others see as
a neutral endeavor when it actually amounts to taking the side of a
particular form of land use (this is also part of the difficulty, if not
farce, of baseline approaches). Another is the lack of consideration
for the possibility not only that land use is an outcome of struggle
(a political process), but that its consequences, such as introducing
an agrochemicals intensive orchard, may have lasting effects stvmving
other types of subsequent use.

Instead of seeking to contextualize scientific terms and practices
critical reactions from some soil scientists to the soil quality con-
cept have been expressed on the basis of technical standardization
problems or of maintaining value neutrality and fears of misinterpreta-
tions by "non-scientists." It is difficult to take such critiques seriously
when the same scientists clearly take the side of agrochemicals inten-
sive farming (De Clerck, Singer, and Lindert 2003) or of "enabling
resource management policy"— a value judgement about the role of
science and an implicit political alignment with state institutions— and
interpret (or, rather, reduce) science to the establishment of objec-
tive facts — a value judgment about what science ought to be (eg
Sojka and Upchurch 1999, 1039-1040). In a rare introspective foray
into soil scientists' social role, Bouma (2004) bemoans soil scientists'
alienating technocratic attitude (stated diplomatically as a dearth of
"reflexive objectivity"), but falls too short of recognizing processes
of ideology and power by ingenuously envisioning soil quality indi
cators application in land use decisions as one of negotiation. T
manner whereby people are included in discussions on land use an
its soil quality effects is rarely if at all socially inclusive (the issue '
also about how the range of stakeholders is decided in the first plac
and there is typically great power asymmetry among those involv
in such discussions. As a result, such critical evaluations of soil qu
lty miss the main problems entirely, precisely (and ironicallv for o
well-meaning Bouma) out of a lack of reflexivity. When scientists for-
mulate what they deem to be objective or neutral definitions, they ar
simultaneously involved in the reproduction of particular ideologies
It should be patently obvious to soil scientists themselves that they
taking sides, but acknowledging this undermines the ideological app
ratus out of which they are collectivelv benefiting. In this respect,

Soil Properties and Soil Quality

eco-social context of soil scientists is as important as the soil quality
indicators measured.

An end to a pretense of neutrality would be of scientific and wider
social benefit, so as to promote open discussions on political posi-
tions (e.g., about land use), the scope and basis of science, and the
role of scientists relative to the state and the rest of society, among
many other unspoken, yet underlying issues. Doing this would be
conducive to, for example, reducing the social biases in soil science
t hat keep muddying attempts at relating soils to society in construc-
tive ways. Ultimately, the issue of soil quality is a "social problem"
(Blaikie and Brookfield (1987, 1 ), tied to and guided by understand-
ings of human requirements, understandings that also vary according
to social context, including ideological processes.

Reducing Soils to Capital Accumulation: Soil Quality as
Ecosystem Service

Yet the social problem is an overwhelmingly profit-oriented one (for
a state-socialist variant, see Engel-Di Mauro 2006) and this is seldom
recognized (see Magdoff 2007 for an exceptional contribution). The
evolution of views on soil quality outlined above parallels and responds
to changes in the most powerful capitalist state over the past three
decades, with the introduction and spread of sustainability concepts,
coupled eventually with ideas of resilience (e.g., Lai 1994; Johnson
2012). Such a close connection between mainstream soil science and
wider institutional discourse 11 is evident in the recent introduction
of the concept of adaptation in soil management (e.g., Lai et al.
2011) and the transformation of soil functions into "ecosvstem ser-
vices" (e.g., Lai et al. 2004, 18; Wall et al. 2012). This is being
forcefully promoted through international agencies as well. In July
of 2012, for example, the International Atomic Energy Agency and
FAO jointly convened a symposium on "Managing Soils for Food
Security and Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation," 12 where
discussions entertained the use of measuring ecosystem services to
assess soil management prospects.

The notion of ecosystem services poses a marked contrast to ecosys-
tem functions. An ecosystem presumably can function with or without
one of its components (unless a single species is crucial to overall
ecosystem stability), so one can still regard an ecosystem beyond the
requirements of a single species. Primary attention is to ecosystems,
rather than their component parts. To transform functions into ser-
vices requires a shift in focus from the requirements of the whole to

54 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

those of one its component parts. To put the matter differently, sera
vices beckon the question of what or who is being serviced by what or
whom. Following the official definition, this is rather clear: "Ecosys-
tern services are the benefits people obtain from ecosystems" (Hassan,
Scholes, and Ash 2005, 5). The purpose of all other species and physic-
ochemical processes is to cater to human benefit. One should then
wonder whose needs and when, since needs to some extent differ
among societies and change over time. If it were left to a matter of
benefiting, there could be a chance to discuss ecosystem services with
respect to social needs. But such is not the case. The concept of ecosys-
tem services, introduced in the 1980s as a didactic tool, eventually
became an accounting medium for capitalist ends, i.e., for profitabil-
ity (Peterson et al. 2010). The delirium of commodifying ecosystem
functions is exemplified in a recent UNEP study, where cost-benefit
analysis can only be envisioned in bourgeois terms:

in the [Millennium Ecosystem Assessment], nutrient cycling is a support-
ing service, water flow regulation is a regulating service, and recreation is
a cultural service. However, if you were a decision maker contemplating
the conversion of a wetland and utilized a cost-benefit analysis including
these three services, you would commit the error of double counting. This
is because nutrient cycling and water regulation both help to provide the
same service under consideration, providing usable water, and the [Millen-
nium Ecosystem AssesmentJ's recreation service is actually a human benefit
of that water provision. An analog)' is that when buying a live chicken you do
not pay for the price of a full chicken plus the price of two legs, two wings,
head, neck etc . . . you simply pay the price of a whole chicken.

(Fisher, Bateman, and Turner 2011, 5)

The multiple uses and functions of an ecosystem — not just by people,
but by other organisms — are indeed too much for our erstwhile poul-
try chrematistics experts. The price of a wetland has as much to do
with a wetland as a chicken's price with chickens. On what basis is one
even in a position to sell a wetland or a chicken? The only account-
ing error here lies in the bourgeois economist's inability to grasp what
counts and on whose terms. Prices for organisms like chickens, physic-
ochemical processes like nutrient cycling, and, of course, wetland soils,
reflect nothing but the outcome of some people's power to exclude
other people from the necessities of life, if not the ecological con-1
ditions of others' existence. Our "decision maker," endowed by our
cavalier bourgeois ideologues with the power to have a wedand rav- F
aged at will, is the ultimate despot. When buying the services of a
bourgeois economist, you simply pay the price of lunacy.

Soil Properties and Soil Quality

Conceptually, ecosystem service is an updated version of an instru-
mentalist view of nature already identified by Merchant (1980),
among others, as part of the development of capitalism. What demar-
cates this recent ideological move is a direct attempt to treat every-
thing as an exchangeable commodity, reducible to market valuation
( i \lies and Shiva 1993; Peterson et al." 2009). Neil Smith (2006) iden-
tified this process as the creation of "ecological commodities" via new
impositions of scarcity (e.g., wetland mitigation banking, Robertson
2004 ) that paradoxically came out of environmental movement pres-
sures (and I would add pressures from associated or concerned
scientific communities). Arguably, one can trace soil commodification
at least to the late nineteenth century, when soils started to be treated
as products to be manufactured for market sale (Bunt 1976, 15,
150-151). By the 1930s, the process extended to soil degradation
through monetary equivalent calculations (Bennett 1939; Brown and
Wolf 1984; Pimentel et al. 1995 ). What soils experts and many other
scientists and environmentalists fail to grasp is the impossibility of
accounting for soil losses (or environmental degradation generally)
by using a historically recent and contingent valuation process (e.g.,
pricing) based on the outcomes of activities and perceptions of some
populations from a single species (i.e., those involved in capitalist mar-
ket transactions) and on belief systems (capitalist cultures) that are not
universally acceptable or applicable. In capitalist social relations, sim-
ply put, those selling clods of soil are the ones receiving payment,
not the soil. It is not soils but people with economic power (money,
property in manufactures and/or means of production) that deter-
mine what soils and even people are worth (their market or exchange
value). When soils are degraded, it is not the soil itself that tells us
how much they are now worth. It is people empowered with buying
and/or selling (and the outcomes of their often bloody profit-seeking
conflicts) that dictate such value (as costs or prices).

Monetary delusions aside, there are at the same time ecological
repercussions to soil manufacture and sale that seem still little appre-
ciated even by monetization-happy scientists. Materials assembled for
manufactured soil are not just for potting plants. There are enormous
quantities used for projects like residential and commercial construc-
tion and infrastructure projects, like motorways. Much of the material
still comes from mining other soils, especially peat ( a type of wet-
land soil), but also sediments (e.g., clay, sand, gravel) and petroleum
by-products (e.g., plastic foams). Increasingly, composted "biosolids"
(sewerage sludge) are being used, and some firms are pushing to gain
a larger share of the topsoil market by specializing in such recycling

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

(Cole 1997). This has become a controversial issue, since topsoil
made from sludge can contain contaminants, such as heavy metals
and dioxins, and be therefore a source of airborne contaminant and
unsuitable for crop production (Bhogal et al. 2003; Nabulo, Black,
and Young 2011). Production and use of topsoil can thus be simul-
taneously a process of degrading soils (in the phase of extraction and
production) and producing long-term soil and broader contamina-
tion problems (in the phase of transport, storage, purchase, and final
application). Selling potting or imported soil has become common-
place in the largest capitalist markets, like the U.S. (see, e.g., http://
dirtexchange.us/). Ascribing market value to soils might not be so
novel, but its consequences are now much more wide -reaching and
possibly long-lasting.

The overall soil commodification process associated with top-
soil markets and the monetary reductionism of soil degradation has
intensified over the past two decades, in line with what Neil Smith
has pointed out for "ecological commodities" generally, as finan-
cial speculators seek to turn arable soil into tradable assets (e.g.,
http://peaksoil.com/) and soil carbon into an investment oppor-
tunity (Bryan et al. 2010; Klare 2013, 201-204; Tschakert 2004).
The largely unquestioned acceptance of commodification in scientific
circles has eased the introduction of the concept of soil ecosystem ser-
vices, whereby soils (in their entirety) and the consequences of their
degradation are now to be thought of as commodities (i.e., reduced
to capitalist uses and objectives). In this sense, the matter is not about
potential commodification, as some surmise (Gomez-Baggethun and
Ruiz-Perez 2011), but of active scientific complicity in construct-
ing an ideology promoting the very process of commodification (see
also Smith, N. 2006, 25), a thoroughly political project of restrict-
ing access to life-sustaining processes and resources — in other words,
theft backed ultimately by institutional violence — to favor capital
accumulation.

Alternative Possibilities for Soil Quality
Evaluation

These implications traverse all current soil quality concepts and esti-
mation parameters (and soil science more generally). They have not
been addressed in leftist scholarship except indirectly, relative to the
socially contingent nature of what counts as soil degradation (e.g. J
Bell and Roberts 1991; Blaikie 1985; Brookfield 2001; Grossman
1997; Scoones 2001; Tengberg and Batta Torheim 2007). .Alternative

Soil Properties and Soil Quality

indices have not been forthcoming and so they have been left largely
to mainstream soil science. Yet a soil quality index or equation could
be devised that accounts for context and political struggles over land
use (i.e., in terms of deliberation and decision-making about who
is to use what and to what end). Indicators can be weighted dif-
ferently according to ecological situation. For example, lower OM
ranges should be used for certain tropical conditions, excluding such
soils as those formed through anthropogenic organic inputs or wet-
land desiccation and being mindful of historical changes (low OM
m ay also be due to past human impact, so that the potential for OM
might be higher than at present). However, to include social aspects
there has to be at least a grasp of what soil uses ( not just market-
oriented) exist in an area and indicators can conceivablv be weighted
according to soil use. To keep to the same example, under tropical
conditions that tend towards low soil OM content, it is a decision
with political ramifications whether OM levels would need a higher or
lower weight in determining an overall soil quality score. One could
argue that for gathering-hunting soil use, low OM levels are fine,
but agrochemicals intensive farming and some types of tree planta-
tions should require higher OM levels than farming based on organic
inputs or permanent-cover plantations (e.g., coffee) or agroforestry,
which would be expected to counter low OM trends. The practice
of shifting cultivation could also be argued to have similar OM value
requirements as gathering-hunting for an acceptable soil quality score.
None of these scores on soil quality would do much to address spatial
variability in species composition associated with different land uses
and soil quality standards, so the matter is intricate even when con-
sidering social processes in the most superficial manner and within a
restricted scale of analysis.

The complexities involved in quantifying soil quality need not mean
that it is impossible to come up with such estimations or models.
It is beyond the scope of this work to build a systematic alternative
soil quality index that accounts for specific ecosystem dynamics and
their differential rates of change, and for differences such as modes of
production and power relations at multiple scales (e.g., the socially
produced needs and political struggles behind the prerogatives for
different types of soil use). However, as a first approximation and in
an unabashedly politically committed manner, one can redefine soil
quality thus: The extent to which a soil, with given intrinsic prop-
erties, nonhuman organisms, and relative degree of human-induced
alterations, enables the fulfilment of survival needs of every human
being, understood both biophysically and socially. Therefore, optimal

58 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

ranges and measurements of bio-physicochemical indicators have to
contribute to the development or reproduction of an egalitarian soci-
ety (otherwise, meeting everyone's survival needs is not possible). This
means, among other things, taking stock of oppressive conditions and
making the effort of finding out what uses of soils are suppressed or
denied that would otherwise further the realization of the biophysical
and cultural needs of all people living in a given area. This sort of
analysis can and should range all the way to the global at the same
time that a political struggle is waged in a certain locality. Viewed this
way, soil degradation, aside from involving a perceptual change, is a
change in soil quality (its bio-physicochemical properties) that con-
strains or prevents the fulfilment of everyone's survival needs and that
undermines the development or reproduction of an egalitarian society.
It would take a long-term comparative study to arrive at a concept of
soil quality and degradation that incorporates major factors more ade-
quately and that could find general applicability. Still, with the above
cautions and potential alternatives in mind and by contextualizing soils
in both ecological and social relations, it should be possible to address
the issue of soil degradation more effectively than is typically done.

Chapter 4

i&e^

Soil Degradation: Overview
and Critique

Soil degradation is a "quiet crisis" (Brown and Wolf 1984; Lai 1990,
10), a "global threat" (Lai and Stewart 1990), "a silent emergency"
(Dowdeswell 1998, xi), "a serious threat to sustainable development"
(Chen et al. 2002, 251), a "threat to modern society" (Montgomery
2007a, 2 ). The view of soil degradation as grave and global is common
even among those averse to hyperbole. It is so pervasive as to have cap-
tured the imagination of some political ecologists (Peet, Robbins, and
Watts 2011, 25). Yet, as discussed in Chapter 3, the soil quality crite-
ria on which this global interpretation rests are decontextualized and
often informed by capitalist assumptions. Furthermore, it turns out
that the interpretation relies on tenuous evidence and faulty method-
ology, especially regarding soil erosion. Claims made of or about soil
degradation therefore need to be carefully evaluated to understand the
actual state of soils and develop political alternatives accordingly.

This does not mean that there is no worldwide soil degradation
problem. Compilations of case studies and reports from different
parts of the world point to its existence (Bai et al. 2008; Brookfield
2001, 158; DobrovoPskii et al. 2003; Markewitz and Richter 2001;
Montgomery 2007b; Rozanov, Targulian, and Orlov 1990; Russell
and Isbell 1986; Sumner and Noble 2003). Even if the consequences
on, say, food and fiber production are unclear because of the large
number of factors involved (Lai 1990, 10; Xachtergaele 2004), the
overall processes leading to soil degradation are also well understood.
Mining, dams, bombing raids, large-scale construction, and monu-
mental buildings have literally made entire soils disappear altogether,

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

if not buried or submerged them. Various sorts of pollution fr 0ni
diverse types of industrial processes and waste production have col!
centrated unparalleled amounts of heavy metals and synthetic or g3 l
contaminants in relatively small volumes of topsoil in both city ZS
country (Bennett 1939, 535-545; Davidson et al. 2006; How^h
and Olszewski 2011; Iwegbue, Williams, and Isirimah 2009; Rabat*
Pend.as 2001; Kiernan 2013; Meuser 2010; Simon et al. 2001; Si a l
1998; Souvent and Pirc 2001 ). Some of these are a long-term scourge
lasting decades to centuries (e.g., heavy metals and or^nochlorinL
and threatening people's health across generations. These often car
cinogenic contaminants bound to particles dislodged and picked m,
by wind are ingested daily by millions or thev percolate through
soils and end up in water supplies. Expansion of industrialized urban
areas and infrastructure has meant large tracts of soils permanently
paved and compacted, useless for most life forms and harbingers of
methane and other foul emissions (Blum 1998b; Bullock and Gregory
1991; Burghardt 2006; Haide and Schaffer 2009). Agrochemicals and
capital intensive farming has spurred the continuous and intensifying
dousing of soils with biocides and fertilizers, leading to contain?
nation problems, acidification, OM (organic matter) depletion and
biodiversity decline (Barak et al. 1997; Bouman et al. 1995; Ellis and
Mel lor 1995; Fullen and Catt 2004; Giri et al. 2005; Hooda et al
2001; Luizao, Bonde, and Rosswall 1992). In some areas with high
evapotranspiration rates, irrigation has been carried out in such a way
as to induce salinization (Hillel 2008; Szabolcs 1998). Manv areas
have experienced accelerated erosion rates that can stress if not debil-
itate food and fiber production and lead to heightened sedimentation
™m U ™° Ph / Caa0n ofsurface waters (Bennett, Carpenter, and Caraco
2UU1; Blaschke, Trustrum, and Hicks 2000; Braimoh and Vlek 2007
Lai 1990). At the same time, as discussed in Chapter 3, soils have
been increasingly manufactured (e.g., turf and potting soil) or have
recently formed and developed as a result of direct human impact
(e.g., through reclamation of land under water, large excavated basins
acnng as accidental sediment traps). In some areas, soils have recendy
been left alone or have been dedicated to other less destructive uses
(e.g., Lai et al. 2004), but they have also been used sustainablv if
not enhanced tor at least centuries (Brookfield 2001; Norton, Sandor,
and White 2003; Reij, Scoones, and Toulmin 1996; Scoones 2001)
lhcse are but some of the salient impacts on soils over the past couple
ofcentur.es. Most of them have been destructive and thev are often
superimposed on the outcomes, degrading (e.g., Boardman 2003;
Montgomery 2007a; Turner and Sabloff 2012) but mostly enhancing

Soil Degradation

( e.g., Kaufman and James 1991; Van Smeerdijk, Spck, and Kooistra
1995), of impacts from societies now long gone. Currently, the over-
a ll tendency is negative, with respect to soils facilitating human and
many other organisms' existence. Soil degradation is an expanding and
Intensifying problem that is hampering or is potentially undermining
people's health or livelihoods, directly or indirectly. However, as with
any form of environmental degradation, the consequences are shared
in a most lopsided manner and the pressures to use soils in destruc-
tive ways result from sets of oppressive power relations that are far
from confined to the areas where soil degradation occurs (e.g., Blaikie
1985; Carney 1991; Engel-Di Mauro 2012a).

A major obstacle to addressing soil degradation is, arguably, the
manner in which the problem is prevalently acted upon and framed
or understood beyond alarmist rhetoric. In short, there is a dearth of
sensitivity to ecological contingency, but especially a lack with respect
to social relations of domination. The credibility of soil degradation
claims and corollary conservation policies is further undermined by
a history of recurring dictatorial and counterproductive technocratic
practices or of policies privileging economically powerful groups.
But it is also the capitalist ideological underpinnings of current soil
degradation discussions, especially among scientists, that hinder the
development of appropriate measures and techniques to address soil
degradation. It will be mainly this ideological aspect that will be the
focus of attention here, as the oppressive and/or capital -centralizing
nature of soil monitoring and conservation practices has been already
ably recounted (e.g., Bell and Roberts 1991; Blaikie and Brookfield
1987; Grossman 1997; Leach and Mearns 1996; Showers 2006).

There is also an uneasy and sometimes contradictory relationship,
sometimes related to histories of colonial abuse, between mainstream
scientific interpretations and those of people using soils for their
livelihood. The variability in perception of and attentiveness to soil
degradation has been addressed to some extent in Chapter 2 (espe-
cially regarding "ethnopedology"). Such variability already indicates
that the basis of determining whether a soil is degraded results not
only from studying soil conditions, but also from one's position in
society and political convictions. Epistemologically, as with soil qual-
ity indicators, to deem a soil degraded is to presume soil superiority
or inferiority based on notions of what constitutes optimal use. The
exercise is predicated on socially specific criteria (physiological and
cultural) relative to time and place. In other words, to expand on
Blaikie and Brookfield's (1987) take on "land degradation" as "social
problem," soil degradation implies a political position relative to how

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

people relate to soils. This is why the matter of soil quality and hence
degradation must encompass a study of social relations, not just soil
properties (see also Blaikie 1985, Chapter 4; Scoones 2001, 14)
In fact, it is not possible to study nonhuman phenomena w ithout at
least some awareness of and attention to the social conditions that
guide the process of studying nonhuman worlds (e.g., Barad 1999-
Harding 1991; Harvey 1974).

Addressing scientists' production of knowledge about the extent
and severity of soil degradation is important for another reason. Much
leftist writing and activism relies on and/or critiques scientific rea-
soning and/or evidence without attentiveness to the details of the
discussed topic (e.g., soils) and its associated scientific field (e.g., soil
science). If the evidence is unreliable or much more nuanced than
appreciated, leftist activism and theoretical claims can be compromised
(see Chapter 6). On the other hand, leftist politics are poorly served
by critique of or skepticism about scientific evidence without build-
ing alternative ways of producing knowledge and/or developing and
diffusing alternative ways of interpreting existing knowledge.

In light of existing practices of scientific knowledge production,
one should approach soil degradation by, among other things, expos-
ing soil scientists' inattentiveness to social context and questions of
power, to their problematic assumptions about society, and to the
absurdity of neutrality and objectivity claims. Soil degradation argu-
ments express a political project regarding what type of land use and
whose criteria are to be used to gauge whether an impact or activity
is negative. But such arguments do not just rest on the dynamics of
power in which scientists are always enmeshed. It is a phenomenon
both related to and beyond what people do to or say about soils.
Learning about what actually happens in soils provides the basis for
any notion of soil degradation in the first place. What is less appre-
ciated on the left is that this enables one to expose incongruities
between social constructs and nonhuman processes and the political
ends veiled by technical abstraction (see, e.g., Stocking 1996, 141).
Studying soils is just as important as studying the social relations asso-
ciated with soil use. By extension, studying environmental processes
is just as important as studying the social relations associated with

Varieties of Change in Soils

To grasp the problem of soil degradation, it can be useful to return
to the topic of what soils are. Soils can be viewed as interactio

Soil Degradation

and assemblages of organisms, air, water, and assorted particles. The
interactions among soil components change (e.g., the amount of
nutrients going from microscopic soil particle surfaces to organisms or
n0 w and how much water and C0 2 flow between soil pores, organ-
isms, and the atmosphere) and so do the components themselves
(eg., tree species age stand, nematode populations, types of clay, or
forms of OM). Hence soil internal composition mutates over time.
One way of organizing knowledge about changes in soils is accord-
ing to soil property. In this way, one can think in terms of biological,
physical, and chemical change, rather than just in terms of degrada-
tion (Table 4.1, expanding upon Dobrovorskii et al. 2003, S6; Hillel
2008, 198; Lai 1990, 9; Lai et al. 2004, 5). Because change in one
soil property reverberates in another, the issues represented by each
item are not mutually exclusive. They should be read as directly or
indirectly interconnected phenomena within and between the major
categories. The reduction of OM may be paired, for example, with soil
erosion. Salinization can be associated with some nutrient deficiencies
(e.g., iron and phosphorus). There are also instances in which a pro-
cess of soil degradation exacerbates another. For instance, heavy metals
become much more mobile when soils acidify, since many heavy metal
elements tend to be soluble (they mix in soil water ) much more readily
at low pH and transfer more easily into roots and soil organisms.

Table 4. 1 Forms of soil modification

General Category Examples

Biological Increase or decrease in soil biodiversity

Decreases or increases in total biomass and organic Carbon
Slow down or acceleration of nutrient turnover rates
Lowering, stabilizing, or raising of rates of organic matter
breakdown

Physical Net erosion or accretion (deposition) of material

Loosening or compaction ( lowering or increasing bulk density j

Water drainage or saturation (waterlogging)

Structure (soil aggregate ) formation, stability, or breakdown

Chemical Organic matter decline or increase

Increase or decrease in buffering capacity
Nutrient depletion or excess

Acidification or alkalization (permanent decrease or increase
in pH)

Salt leaching or build-up (salinization)

H eaw metal or radionuclide mobilization or immobilization

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

As discussed in Chapter 2, soils appear, change, and disappear
whether or not people exist or do anything to soils ( DobrovoPskij
et al. 2003, S3; Schaetzl and Anderson 2005). Sometimes, like climate
change or high magnitude floods, environmental forces are affected by
human action. At times, like asteroid impact or volcanic eruptions,
they are not. To make sense of changes in soils (or physical envi-
ronments generally ), human impact must be understood as part of
a constellation offerees, social and environmental, and as having mul-
tiple possible outcomes (positive, negative, or indifferent), depending
on context. Separating human impact from that of other factors is no
easy task. Not all outcomes of human activity are obvious or directly
detectable and their evaluation is not always straightforward. There
are gradations of human influence, from the intensification of pre-
existing conditions (e.g., adding materials to raise pH in a high-CEC
soil or cutting a few trees on a slope leading to crossing a thresh-
old and producing a landslide) to direct effects (e.g., raising OM by
adding manure or enriching soils with heavy metals through releases
from industrial processing plants). The same can be said of the kinds
of change in soils that impair the fulfilment of our physiological needs
and/or of socially specific objectives. In this case, it is usually called
soil degradation.

The Multifarious Nature of Soil Degradation

Soil degradation can be perceived in many ways. For the purpose of
clarifying the processes involved in soil degradation as understood in
the soil science mainstream, as negative changes relative to human
uses, I provide some illustrations systematized according to soil prop-
erty 7 , as outlined in table 4.1. Then it will be shown how they are
interlinked, since their repercussions can only make sense if examined
as part of a whole.

Biological Degradation

Biological degradation encompasses changes in soils that negatively
affect other organisms and therefore the overall functioning of an
ecosystem. For instance, toxic emissions from volcanoes or indiscrim-
inate and persistent biocides and monocultures often lead to reduced
biodiversity. The effects of pollution on water and air are typical!
well publicized, but not so for soil pollution and its consequences.
Heavy metal pollution is particularly destructive of soil organisms.

Soil Degradation

j t i s estimated that the toxicity from metal contamination can reduce
the diversity of soil bacteria by as much as 99.9 percent, even if the
total biomass of bacteria is unaffected. It is especially the rare species
of bacteria that can be wiped out entirely under such conditions,
but the repercussions of their loss on the functioning of ecosystems
ar e mostly unknown (Gans, Wolinsky, and Dunbar 2005). However,
given the importance of bacteria, a decline in bacterial diversity can
spell bottlenecks in the nutrient cycle, which could harm plants and
other below- and above-ground organisms (such as us), whether they
feed on bacteria or plants (including crops). And if a soil loses many of
the species of bacteria that help make nutrients available to plants, it is
likely that many of the functions that bacteria provide will also be lost.
Then many plants can be harmed, as well as the organisms that depend
on them. This is because it is the diversity of functions that organisms
play in an ecosystem — not just the number of species — that determines
the health of an ecosystem.

Physical Degradation

Physical degradation is the negative modification of the physical prop-
erties of a soil. Soil structure can be altered by the use of heavy
equipment (tractors, combines) or the confinement oflarge domesti-
cated animals. Often, such practices result in compaction. In this case,
soil aggregates are pressed into more plate -like shapes, which hinder
w ater and air flow. Crops that do not tolerate waterlogging or shallow
rooting depths will grow stunted or not at all (Soane and Ouwerkerk
1994). Water flow and storage can be hampered in other ways, too.
The draining of wetland soils leads to their collapse, along with the
ecosystem they support. Irrigation in arid areas might improve mois-
ture levels and crop yield, but eventually it leads to waterlogging
problems and the build-up of salts close to or even on the surface,
killing most life-forms (Fullen and Catt 2004).

Accelerated soil erosion is usually the best-known type of physical
degradation. It is defined as the rate of soil formation (weathering
and/or additions of sediment) being lower than the rate of soil
removal. Erosion occurs regularly, with or without human impact,
through the detachment and movement of soil components from
one site to another. When soil particles are moved they are known as
sediment. When precipitation exceeds soil infiltration capacity, water
carries particles away from the soil surface. Similarly, when wind
speeds are stronger than the forces of soil particle aggregation, the

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

wind will carry soil particles away. Bare soil surfaces raise dryness
and lower soil particle cohesion, so winds can move particles more
easily.

The main factors determining the occurrence and degree of ero-
sion can be divided according to factors of erosivity (the strength 0 f
wind and water) and erodibility (the propensity for erosion). Wind
erosive strength is related to its frequency, magnitude, duration, and
velocity. The degree to which rainfall can dislodge (detach) and move
(transport) soil particles depends on its duration, intensity, raindrop
mass and size, velocity at impact, and frequency. Water erosion occurs
as splash (loosening of particles), sheetwash (particles transported
through thin, continuous film over a smooth surface), and channeled
forms. The latter may occur as rills or gullies (concentrated overland
flow in variable width channels) and subsurface channels or piping
(Bennett 1939; Bryan 2000; Ellis and Mellor 1995, 241-246; Fullen
and Catt 2004, 10-20; Laflen and Roose 1998; Lai 1990, 55-56).
Human activities are also a direct force of erosivity through, for
instance, harvesting, tillage, land levelling, and excavation (Boardman
Poesen, and Evans 2003).

Soil erodibility is dictated largely by surface cover (height, struc-
ture, and density of plant cover, surface roughness) and slope
angle and length. Human impact therefore has much influence
on erodibility as well, such as by changing slope geometrv (e.g.,
terracing) or land cover. Forested ecosystems tend to be most effec-
tive at reducing erosion rates. However, woods on steep slopes (>40
percent) may not be so effective (Koulouri and Giourga 2007)
splash erosion can be severe even under forests, depending on the
tribution and characteristics of sub-canopv vegetation (Geifiler et
2013; Tsukamoto 1966). Susceptibility to rainfall depends on O
and clay content, root density, and slope angle and length. These
affect soil-particle aggregate size distribution, particle cohesion, and
soil moisture retention capacity. Crusting (gluing of particles) on the
soil surface can minimize wind erosion but augment water erosion,
depending on slope characteristics. Slope angle and length are even
more directly associated with erosion rates. Generallv,^ longer and
steeper slopes lead to high erosion rates, even with plenty of vegetation
cover (Bryan 2000; Lai 1990, 60-92, 111-126).

The major consequences of soil erosion are losses of topsoil,
depth, nutrients, and water-holding capacity, leading to changes if not
declines in organism populations. Soil eroded from one place moves
to another, where it may accumulate (sedimentation). Sedimentation
can lead to burial of other soils or to infilling of lakes, reservoirs,

Soil Degradation

rivers, drainage ditches, and other land-based bodies of water, harming
aquatic ecosystems. Sedimentation rates tend to be raised by erosion,
but the redistribution and actual impact of soil-derived sediment is not
easy to sort out.

Chemical Degradation

Chemical degradation refers to the alteration of the chemical proper-
ties of soil such that there are negative repercussions for the ecosystem
of which a soil is part. This negative impact can take many forms.
In arid zones, it has often taken the form of irrigation-induced
salinization, wiping out most organisms for decades. Other such last-
ing effects are heavy metal and other kinds of pollution through
military activities and industrial emissions, which alter if not fatally
undermine ecosystems. Fertilizer saturation and leaching has led to
aquifer pollution and the loss of buffering capacity. The latter is
linked to acidification through synthetic fertilizer nitrogen applica-
tions and also acid-rain inducing industrial air emissions (Barak et al.
1997; Bouman et al. 1995; Sumner and Noble 2003). Prior to the
introduction and global spread of synthetic fertilizer, organic mate-
rials served as the main source of nutrient replenishment in farming.
The substances could be derived from manure (animal feces, includ-
ing from people), crop and other plant residues, from mixtures of
the manure and plant matter, from composted vegetable matter, and
so on. Replacing these organic fertilizers with synthetic ones has
resulted in lowering OM in cultivated soils and their nutrient- and
water-holding capacity.

The Interrelatedness of Forms of Degradation

This last is also an example of how different kinds of soil degrada-
tion are interrelated. Reduced OM compromises micro-organisms'
survival and their contribution to making stable soil aggregates. This
is because a decline in OM means the destruction of habitat for most
micro-organisms and a decrease in the amount of OM that would oth-
erwise be inaccessible to microbes that feed on it. When populations
of soil life forms dwindle, humus levels start falling as micro-organisms
will continue to breakdown existing humus. When there is less food
(OM) for soil micro-organisms, fewer microbes can survive and the
food source starts to disappear even more rapidly. Soil nutrients and
water-holding capacity tend to decrease, as do the binding agents that
microbes contribute and that glue or keep soil particles together. And

68 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

so the soil structure starts to fall apart as well, with the negative effe
described above with respect to physical soil degradation ( Hayes 1991
19). As further illustration, repeated treading by machines can turn
soil structure in the upper A horizon ("topsoil") from granular to
platy (compaction). This impairs water and air flow. Soil and above-
ground organisms are affected by hindered rooting or reduced oxygen
levels. It is only to simplify a set of very complex processes that it is
useful to differentiate human impact according to major soil proper-
ties. To make sense of overall impact, it is necessary to assess how all
soil properties are affected at once. Soil quality indices can be use-
ful precisely for that purpose and can assist in understanding overall
change in soils, but they must be refined, understood politically,
made context-sensitive, as explained in Chapter 3.

The Social Context of Soil Degradation

The above description is to give a sense of the great variability aru*
interconnectivity that exists with respect to soil degradation. However,
describing soils as degraded implies an alteration of soil proper-
ties relative to socially specific uses, not to the general status of a
soil. Degradation beckons the question of the frame of reference
used. To address this, the social context and position of the ana-
lyst and the evaluative criteria employed must all be considered. Yet
these basic questions of social context are often relegated at most to
afterthoughts. The situation is even worse if one expects soil degrada-
tion studies to address social conflict and relations of power, often key
to explaining destructive human impacts.

It should be noted that the concept of degradation in soil science
is not necessarily associated with usefulness to people or with soils in
their entirety. In the study of soil formation, one can, for example,
describe as degradation the breakdown of fragipans ( Bx horizons),
dense (high bulk density) and often brittle layers that tend to hinder
downward water flow and plant rooting. It is also often called degra-
dation the transformation and depletion of clays in clay-predominant
layers (Bt or Argillic horizons) that can result in the development
of a coarser-grained (sandier), quartz-dominated, low-pH, and low-
CEC, or an E horizon (Schaetzl and Anderson 2005, 370-380).
This implicit ranking of single parts of soils in evolutionary terms
is relative to an initial set of conditions selected by the researcher.
For instance, already formed plinthite is taken as the point of depar-
ture, but one could just as well start from before plinthite formed
in a soil and then name plinthite formation a form of degradation^

Soil Degradation

Terms can only be meaningful in context. However, one could use
the term change instead of degradation. The conflation of degradation
with breakdown (of ranking system with general process of change)
implies an indifference to social context that becomes rather prob-
lematic when put to practice. For instance, plinthite breakdown can
be quite useful for, among other forms of cultivation, agroforestry
(by increasing water flow and rooting depth) and not as useful for
rice paddies (since a plinthite layer enhances ponding on the sur-
face). The "degradation" of plinthite is an improvement for one type
of use and not for another, but in a privileged context disassoci-
ated from such practicalities, the difference between degradation and
decomposition is subtle and calling out such difference may seem like
pilodectomy.

Soil Degradation and Reproduction of Capitalist Ideology

And scientists, as a result of their usefulness for capitalists and govern-
ments, tend to be well rewarded and to live privileged lives detached
from everyday struggles for existence. Arguably, this could be one rea-
son for there being such little awareness among scientists about the
kind of social system in w hich they live. There is not much incen-
tive to find out (or, at a minimum, in applying the same scientific
principles to studying the society they are part of) and so the usual
practice in the biophysical sciences is to take prevailing ideologies for
granted, as the norm, and thereby reproduce them. To illustrate the
reproduction of predominant ideology in scientific discussions on soil
degradation, one can start by bringing under scrutiny current and
widely used definitions.

One is from Lai, Hall, and Miller ( 1989, 52), who recognize both
human and nonhuman causes and multiple types of use in their under-
standing of soil degradation as the "diminution of soil quality," in
common with more recent versions (e.g., Hillel 2008, 13). In their
view, "it is important to identify the critical limits of soil properties
and processes that constrain various uses." The uses are indeed var-
ious, yet the discussion is constrained by a narrow understanding of
society. The authors divide the world into "agricultural" and "non-
agricultural," differentiating "economically-viable" from subsistence
farming and seeing "waste attenuation" and "load-bearing" as pri-
mary examples of other forms of land use. Apparently, people do
not gather medicinal plants or hunt and the economically viable is
deemed only what is unnecessary to live (i.e., not subsistence). Similar
technocratic varieties of bourgeois ideology surface elsewhere, with

70 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

often careless or confused borrowings from mainstream economic
terminology.

Such beliefs surface more clearly when soils are reduced to farm,
production transmission belts. For instance, according to Lindert
(2000, 8 ), soil degradation "refers to any . . . change in the soil's con<fc
tion that low ers its agricultural productivity, defined as its contribution
to the economic value of yields per unit of land area, holding other
agricultural inputs the same." Just what kind of economy the author
is talking about is no mystery, judging from his valuation in yields per
unit of land area. In fact, by reducing soils to farming productivity, the
author is not even addressing soils at all. A change in land use from
conventional to organic farming can lead to lower yields, but end up
improving soil quality, relative to conventional definitions (de PontL
Rijk, and van Ittersum 2012; Mader et al. 2002; Pimentel et al. 2005-
Seufert, Ramankutty, and Foley 2012). For the likes of Lindert, who
cannot tell the difference between soil characteristics and human use,
a shift to organic farming could qualify as soil degradation. We are
fortunate that he spares us tirades against low-yield farming in his
otherwise useful volume, but the political implications of his defini-
tion are clear and, as shown in the previous chapter, they are more
directly expressed as an allegiance to mainstream farming (De Clerck.
Singer, and Lindert 2003).

These implications infuse much of soil science but are usually more
tempered and less explicit. Lai (1997, 998) sees soil degradation as
"the loss of actual or potential productivity or utilitv as a result of
natural or anthropogenic factors" (cf. Hillel 2008, 13; Wild 2003,
69). The nature of this productivity is specified on other occasions,'
such as in Lai (1994, 59), who deems a "low output subsistence'
system ... economically unsustainable because of low productivity,' ,
even if the author recognizes it can have higher energy efficiency and
despite subsistence systems having been around for millennia without
any problems of economic "sustainability." Sometimes, appeal is made
to abstractions like energy flux models that, when shed of function-use
conflations and explicated relative to land use, they betray narrow con-
cerns reflecting life in industrialized capitalist societv (Blum 1998a,
3-5; Bouma 2004, 291-292 ). These persist in recent turns towards
more ecologically oriented approaches. Lai et al. (2004, 4-5) retain
a concern for losses in utility and productivity, but the latter is rede-
fined in terms of quantities of biomass, as part of ecosvstem functions
that include "moderation capacity." Chen et al. (2002, 244), even
enrolling critics like Blaikie and Brookfield (1987), deem soil degra-
dation to imply a reduction in "desired" actual or potential plant

Soil Degradation

production and diversity or, more generally, the impairment of the
fulfilment of a "desired function" or use. Just who does the desir-
ing is a matter cleverly left for us to guess. The inclusion of Blaikie
and Brookfield's work, devoid of its principal thesis that soil degra-
dation is a social question, amounts to bibliographical garnish (for
other such examples, see Boardman 2006, 74; Safriel 2007, 2). Oth-
ers' approaches (e.g., Hillel 2008, ix; Lai et al. 2004) concur more
closely with Bai et al. (2008, 233), who surmise the issue to be one of
"long-term loss of ecological function and productivity [i.e., the rate
of biomass produced] caused by disturbances from which land cannot
recover unaided."

There are two fundamental problems with this quantitative obses-
sion about biomass. First, there is a failure to specify the location
of biomass production. Soils and above-ground ecosystem charac-
teristics are not coterminous. If a tropical rainforest on a low-CEC,
highly weathered soil (e.g., a Ferralsol) is cut down and/or burned
and replaced by a permanent high agro-diverse system or by a tem-
porary farming area featuring intercropping, there would be a fall in
total biomass but that would not affect the soil productivity itself,
since such a soil tends to be nutrient poor. In fact, according to the
same logic in current soil quality definitions, the soil itself can gain
in biomass productivity with anthropogenic OM additions. In such
cases, reducing soil quality to biomass quantities leads to misinterpret
above-ground vegetation change for soil degradation.

Second, the emphasis on biomass production, rather than or in
addition to quality, stability, or composition, suggests evaluative cri-
teria other than ecological. That is, it points to the capitalist fixation
with producing ever greater amounts of commodities. A red pine plan-
tation replaced by an agro-diverse cropping system results in less total
biomass but greater biomass diversity. A narrow quantitative focus
misses this difference altogether. Moreover, given the wider capital-
ist context of soil science speak, it is clear that higher biomass systems
that are important for, say, subsistence gathering purposes would be
lesser valued than less biomass producing market-oriented plantations
or cropland. This is implicit in concerns raised about taking care to
distinguish primary production (e.g., biomass) from crop prices (e.g.,
Blaschke, Trustrum, and Hicks 2000, 23 ), which suggests a confusion
of ecological and social processes reigning among scientists.

These confusions are exacerbated by assuming that only people
can degrade soils or by equating human impact with disturbance,
a commonplace that flies in the face of evidence at times put for-
ward by the same scientists making such pronouncements (e.g., Blum

72 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

:«

1998a, 4; Lai 1997; Lai et al. 2004, 4-5, 18). Those that see people
(and presumably themselves) as capable of constructive relations with
soils leave the rest of nature off the hook, but still regard only peo-
ple as capable of degrading soils (e.g., Gerrard 2000, 180). The]
is no possibility 7 , in a presumed harmonious human-free world,
soils being negatively affected by the combined action of wind an<
water during arid climate phases, of soil-scouring glacial advances and
retreats, of soils-submerging sea-level rise, of soil- liquefying earth-
quakes, or of soil -exploding asteroid impacts (Certini and Scalenghe
2006, 207-208; Dobrovol'skii et al. 2003; Schaetzl and Anderson
2005, 342-346). The same false dichotomy found in pedogenesis the-
ories (Chapter 2 ) is replicated here, where nature, external to people
cannot feature any soil degradation.

The Main Ideological Underpinnings of Current Soil
Degradation Discourse

Soil degradation has been defined differently over time and its con-
ceptualization varies moderately according to specialist, with ample
convergence on several themes. As in the case of soil quality, it is not
possible, without specific reference to a social context, to state that a
soil is getting degraded. It depends on what a soil is deemed useful for
and by whom, who is affected by changes in soils and how. In flagrant
contradiction with evidence, soils are expected to remain stable (or
not degraded, by definition) without human impact. Some scientists
regard only people as capable of degrading soils and, at other times,
other forces are admitted into the soil degradation arena. This incon-
sistency reflects a prevailing society-nature dichotomy (or, better, an
ideology of universal and external nature, as Neil Smith identified
it), where people are unnatural and sometimes viewed as hopelessly
degrading of soils, while "nature" is supposed to remain stable to suit
some vaguely defined use.

Moreover, behind lofty universalizing concepts (e.g., ecological
functions, soil energy or resilience) lie assumptions not only about
usefulness, but, when one scratches the discursive surface, also of
market-oriented use and production. Soil scientists largely deem soils
as good only if they can help generate more stuff, whether crops or
a more generic biomass. Experts seem unaware of the possibility that
what counts as a functioning or productive ecosystem can vary, dare
one be so bold, according to social context. When seen in a context
where "economy" stands for capitalism, this is hardly a departure from
the destructive maximum-yield approach that soil quality assessment

Soil Degradation

was supposed to restrain, if not critique. 1 It is anyway tempting to be
amused by the near-fetishistic labelling of soils as more or less pro-
ductive. Soils, in themselves, produce nothing; they are products of
interactions. Even so, productivity potential depends on technologi-
cal system (and therefore social relations), not just soil characteristics
(Pieri 1992, 16). Soil scientists, by fixating on service, quality, mone-
tary value (Chapter 2), and productivity, project capitalist economies
onto soils, contradicting otherwise genuine concerns over the fate of
soils. 2 The durability of these biases is striking, as they are virtually the
same as those identified in Blaikie (1985, 22). To regard the problem
as one of a lack of a clear definition (e.g., Dobrovol'skii et al. 2003) is
much too generous and misses the point. The problem is simply the
tacit acceptance of capitalist ideologies, resulting in a lack of relational
logic and in internally inconsistent approaches.

The Extent and Severity of Soil Degradation

The above-described approaches permeate assessments regarding the
extent and severity- of soil degradation, but there are additional obsta-
cles to grasping the overall situation of soils worldwide that result from
systemic and historically cumulative social inequalities. To put the
matter simply, current understanding on the global reach and mag-
nitude of soil degradation is poor. This reflects the level of importance
given by institutions with the economic power to fund the necessary
basic research, a low priority' reproduced both by environmentalist
and leftist movements, where soils hardly figure at all among envi-
ronmental concerns, and by the scientific mainstream, as shown by
the treatment of soils as afterthought in the Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment (see Hassan, Scholes, and Ash 2005). 3

Data Availability on Soils

One aspect of basic research is investigating soil characteristics at dif-
ferent points in time to determine how soils are changing. Soil surveys
can be used for such purposes, but they have seldom been concerned
with degradation until the 1930s and then primarily with erosion.
Stored samples, long-term field-experiment records, case studies, and
other historical sources can also enable such assessment (Baranyai,
Fekete, and Kovacs 1987; De Clerck, Singer, and Lindert 2003;
Lindert 2000; Markewitz and Richter 2001; Montgomery 2007b).
The trouble is that only for a few places are there soil surveys older
than a few decades (if there are surveys at all) and archived samples and

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

historical records tend to be similarly rare. Long-term experimental
stations are also geographically limited and represent a narrow range
of situations, largely humid temperate environments. Surveys, using
different classification systems, have also been confined to administra-
tive borders in select countries, hindering the analysis of processes that
are in actuality largely contiguous and beyond such borders. Hence,
soil surveys and other sources remain highly differentiated in their
data quality; availability, coverage, and scope. The most extensive and
detailed databases tend to be from countries w ith high economic and
military leverage. Most of the rest of the world is comparatively very
ill served still.

Adding to challenges in obtaining adequate information is the fact
that until the 1960s, there was little concerted effort at a global soils
assessment. The first world soils map, accomplished largely under the
auspices of the FAO, did not appear until 1971. It had many prob-
lems, with mapping units based on information that may or may not
exist or may pertain only to a small fraction of the area represented.
Since the early 1990s, the map has been updated with standard-
ized data from existing national surveys through the International
Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC) and the Interna-
tional Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). 4 The result is
the 2008 Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD), which is highly
uneven in data quality but is becoming the basis of land use policy
evaluation (FAO et al. 2012). The soil parameters include organic car-
bon, pH, water-holding capacity 7 , soil depth, CEC, clay percentages,
total exchangeable nutrients (a proxy for plant availability), lime and
gypsum contents, sodicity, salinity, texture, and granulometry. Relia-
bility- problems nevertheless persist, the magnitude varying according
to regional coverage (Batjes 2002). The cropping system produc-
tivity focus notwithstanding (Batjes et al. 1997), the data can be
put to multiple uses, including other forms of food procurement.
However, there is much information that is missing because of data
scarcity (e.g., bulk density, exchangeable aluminum, and soil organ-
ism diversity), while some data have been excluded because they do
not conform to USDA standards (standards selected without justifi-
cation), such as systems that use different particle size classes. Much
caution must therefore be exercised when using the HWSD for soil
degradation estimates.

Global Assessments of Soil Degradation (GLASOD)

The first attempt at a comprehensive and global evaluation of soil
degradation was quite recent. Initiated in 1974, under the FAO

Soil Degradation

and UNEP, a monumental project called the Global Assessment of
Soil Degradation (GLASOD) was completed in 1990, using the
f AO world soils map database. The result was the publication of a
1:10,000,000 scale map, with an accompanying report and database.
The study pointed to a rise, between the 1940s and 1980s, from
roughly 10 percent to 40 percent of total global farmland ruined
by soil degradation, excluding land under shifting cultivation. 5 Such
an alarming figure was ostensibly aimed at convincing government
action, to help identify priori ty areas, as well as provide a prelimi-
na rv database approachable to non-experts (Oldeman, Hakkeling, and
Sombroek 1990).

GLASOD was supposed to be only a first step in view of plans for
more precise and extensive data gathering over the following decades.
Instead, the figures have been used liberally to support claims about
the gravity and distribution of soil degradation by scientists (e.g., Bot,
Nachtergaele, and Young 2000, 27-28; Fullen and Catt 2004, 2;
Gerrard 2000, 180-181; Hassan, Scholes, and Ash 2005; Lai 1998;
Oldeman 1994; Steiner 1996 ), by environmental organizations like
the World Resources Institute (e.g., WRI 1999), and by some promi-
nent environmentalists (e.g., Brown 2003). Consequently, GLASOD
has been infused with authoritative pomp, irrespective of problems
admitted by the authors. Salient among them are the inappropriate -
ness for "national scale" maps, mapping exaggeration of degradation
extent (a basic map unit area with only 1 percent degradation is
visualized as 100 percent degraded), inconsistencies due to differ-
ences among "experts" reporting, unverifiable local soil scientists'
judgment, paucity of actual measurements, visual exaggeration of the
geographical extent of degradation, stressing only destructive impact
by humans, and frequent use of unreliable equation-derived estimates
(Eswaran, Lai, and Reich 2001; Lai et al. 2004, 28; Lindert 2000;
Nachtergaele 2004; Oldeman 1994; Rozanov, Targulian, and Orlov
1990, 203; Safriel 2007). 6

Somewhat uncharitably, GLASOD is now decreed "a map of
perceptions on the type and degree of degradation" that is "now
out-of-date," 7 but the flaws are much deeper. 8 There is no discussion
about how to treat instances involving multiple forms of degradation
over the same area, visually or analytically, such as wind erosion com-
bined with pollution (see also Van Lynden 1995, 14). Diverse forms
of soil degradation are instead represented as if they could be sep-
arable one from the other. But even if one were to make the case
that an area is predominantly affected by water erosion, there should
be qualification as to whether and how the process affects and/or is
affected by or combines with other changes in soil properties. Soil

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

erosion, for example, may occur as a result of accelerated decompo^
tion rates of OM and/or prolonged drought or rainfall combined with
particular texture characteristics (cf. Bai et al. 2012, 7). Cartographical
representation is also much more problematic than the GLASOj)
authors recognize. Soil mapping units are delineated on the basis of
"physiography, " defined in terms of relative homogeneity in topog.
raphy, climate, soils, vegetation, and land use (Oldeman, Hakkelinf
and Sombroek 1990, 8-9). Because the mapping units devised range
over tens of thousands of hectares, the claim for relative homogeneity
within the mapping units is dubious and the data therefore so general-
lzed as to be as useful as aesthetically pleasing drapery in analyzing soil
degradation. Then there is the funny logical slippage where land use
becomes a physiographic feature, turning soil degradation into the lay
of the land and soil scientists into victims of their own abstractions
Such confusion of biophysical and political categories is not uncom-
mon. Webster (1997), in a discussion on methods of evaluation and
inventory that can effectively capture soil variability, advocates for an
approach that starts from the field, proceeds to the farm or estate,
thence to physiographic region, the nation-state, and finally the world
The switch between social relations of power and biophysical pro-
cesses is as seamless as it is insidious. The political struggles producing
fields, farms/estates, and nation-states become exogenous nonhuman
phenomena.

Soil Degradation as Commercial Crop Yield Decline

Official recognition of major problems has had some institutional
reverberations and further work has been promoted to improve
matters. 9 The FAO has established the Global Soil Partnership in 2012
and the Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils (set up in June
201 3 ). 10 This might be welcome news to dirt enthusiasts like me, but
in capitalism what seems like a gain for humanity often turns out to
be a major setback for the many. Formal intensification of interna-
tional support for worldwide soil degradation monitoring has been
inversely proportional to overall funding. The result of reduced fund-
ing is reflected in the fact that an updated version of worldwide figures
has not come about except piecemeal. Worse, soil degradation esti-
mates have been subsumed under different projects, sometimes hardly
related to soils at all, folded under land degradation or ecosvstem
services databases (Omuto, Nachtergaele, and Rojas 2013).

A geographically circumscribed UNEP-FAO project called Land
Degradation Assessment in Drylands (LADA), funded bv the Global

Soil Degradation

Environmental Facility (GEF), involved pilot studies in six countries
carried out between 2006 and 2011. It aimed to establish baseline
information and methodological guidelines. It supposedly incorpo-
rates input from "local stakeholders" and the outcomes of constructive
human impacts, but it involves no actual people using soils (e.g.,
peasant cultivators) and only marginally addresses soil degradation.

This is to say the least a peculiar development, given the out-
comes of antecedent projects, such as the People, Land Manage-
ment, and Environmental Change (PLEC) project. The project was
carried out under the United Nations University over six largely
non-industrialized areas between 1992 and 2002 and funded by the
GEF during the final six years. It was a farmer-centered participatory
approach to land degradation that led to identifying knowledge and
technologies that sustain agrodiversity and reduce destructive impact
(Tengberg and Batta Torheim 2007). Apparently, findings from the
bottom-up are best ignored if the purpose is to reach the powerful
(e.g., "policy-makers").

Rather than learning from studies emerging from projects like
PLEC, a new Global Assessment of Land Degradation and Improve-
ment (GLADA) was introduced that promised "to identify (1) the
status and trends of land degradation, (2) hotspots suffering extreme
constraints or at severe risk and, also, areas where degradation has
been arrested or reversed." 11 But the focus was on "biomass" (i.e.,
crop) production, conflated with land degradation (Bai et al. 2012).
The enterprise rests on remotely sensed reflectivity data that are
compared to a crop-production model to evaluate trends in u land
degradation." The model, however, is about rain-fed crops (and it
is not clear what is included as "crops"), not ecosystems or soils, and
the objective is to determine whether any drops in crop yield is due to
soil degradation in contrast to weather, assuming optimum nutrient
availability, no pathogens, and no change in soil or crop character-
istics. In other words, major factors influencing crop production are
simply tossed aside. More importantly, soils are reduced to inputs of
texture, depth, and water-holding capacity. As a consequence, soils slip
out of view, except as vehicles for crop yield. The subsequent report
(Conijn et al. 2013) makes for even more confused estimates, as soil
and land are used interchangeably and crop yield is still assumed to be
a function of weather patterns and a handful of soil physical proper-
ties. It appears that GLADA represents very well what is gained when
doing research on the cheap. No attempt is made to identify the extent
or severity of soil degradation. Unfortunately, the only critique of this
exercise, coming even from the promoters of the approach, has so far

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

been what should have been evident from the beginning, which is that
NDVI-based data on " greenness" cannot serve as proxy for other vari-
ables (Bai et al. 2008; Kellner, Risoli, and Metz 2011; Nachtergaele
et al. 2011,8 ).

After discovering the obvious, LADA and GLADA have been, i n
turn, superseded by another FAO-UNEP-GEF joint project tided
Global Land Degradation Information System (GLADIS), which fea-
tures a searchable online database with roughly the same limitations
regarding regional data availability and problems of regionally spe-
cific differential data resolution as previous databases (another way
of saying that no funding was made available to carry out actual
fieldwork). The project proceeds from the above-critiqued ecosys-
tem services approach, but assesses services on the basis of biomass,
soil health, water resources, biodiversity, economic production, and
social and cultural wealth (Nachtergaele et al. 2011, 14-15). This
time, possibly as a result of learning from the misuse of GLASOD,
there is an explicit warning 12 against use of GLADIS for national pol-
icy. This is despite the stated objective of the project's "deployment
as an interactive resource to inform decision-making on global level
actions," 13 as if global actions had no repercussions on national pol-
icy formation. There is then the matter of ecosystems and people's
relationship to them. Given the topic at hand, let us look into how
soils enter the stage. Soil health is deemed of relevance only for farm-
ing systems (shifting cultivation and gathering-hunting are excluded
entirely), which are understood as economically productive only if
they exhibit high output. That seems congruent with the scientists'
construct of the human subject, "the beneficiary," whose ecosystem
service preferences change over time and who, as the generic ben-
eficiary, performs the superhuman feat of living in all societies and
none at the same time. Yet this ecosystem service beneficiary has some
definite characteristics, identifiable in the services ecosystems provide
for economic benefit, defined as getting the highest output from the
land, and social and cultural wealth, fulfilled by "[market] accessi-
bility, tourism and the presence of protected areas" (Nachtergaele,
Biancalani, and Petri 2011; Nachtergaele, Petri, and Biancalani 2010).
Apparently, everyone wants to and can overproduce, sell stuff, be a
tourist, and let nature be, all at the same time. In this fabulous world
where capitalists' contradictory and rapacious objectives are made to
be everyone's dream future, we are all the same and scales of action are
easily kept apart, since we all have the same political leverage. We are in
a happy world of concerted interactions among equals aiming to com-
bat land degradation together, in harmony. In this, even alternatives

Soil Degradation

like PLEC are of little help, since they avoid confronting problems
that might blow awav the much desired synergy between agriculture
and environmental protection (Tengberg and Batta Torheim 2007,
271-273).

Ultimately, the problems encountered in all these assessments are
not just technical, but foundational. One is an inbuilt bias toward the
ruling classes and their allied technocrats. The reliance on ''experts"
(that is, soil and/or environmental scientists), the often gratuitous
inclusion of population density figures in global soil degradation esti-
mates (rather than relative intensity of actual, measured impact), and
the preoccupation with providing accurate data that suits the national
state, all make the exercise politically palatable to those whose interest
it is to mask capitalist relations of domination through smoke screens.
Regrettably, this assumed legitimacy of devoting scientific attention
to fulfil the demands of government officials ("planners," "policy-
makers," "decision-makers"), who are largely at the service of capital,
is widespread and little contested among soil scientists and associated
specialists (cf. Bai et al. 2008; Oldeman, Hakkeling, and Sombroek
1990, 3-4; Sonneveld and Dent 2009).

Another set of problems can be directly linked to the ways in
which soil degradation is constructed, as discussed above. GLASOD
was ostensibly guided with the understanding developed in 1979 at
UNESCO that occurrences of soil degradation are "human induced
phenomena which lower the current and/or future capacity of the
soil to support human life," 14 but the emphasis has actually been on
farming "productivity" (Oldeman and van Lynden 1996, 2, 9). With
this sleight of hand, crop yield decline is conflated with degradation,
even if factors other than soil degradation might be more influential.
GLADA is rendering explicit what was ensconced in GLASOD while
at the same time moving away from assessing soil degradation per se.
GLADIS is the final parody, with soils reduced to how well they can
boost output. Thus, market-oriented views of farm productivity (e.g.,
shirting cultivation and non-agricultural uses are excluded) find their
way into the practice of adjudicating which areas of the world are
deemed degraded and in need of intervention. Because soil degra-
dation is systematically reduced to and mapped according to human
impact and the demands of largely market-oriented farming, it is not
possible to discern nonhuman sources of degradation or to distin-
guish ecologically sustainable from destructive forms of land use that
are excluded from analysis.

The contradictory bourgeois view of nature also emerges in such
global assessments, carrying forth a view, expressed directly in the

80 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

above-cited UNESCO document, that soil degradation is sol
human induced. Accordingly, soil-stabilizing land use is not factored
into the GLASOD inventory, which summarily precludes any evalu.
ation of the net effect of human impact (Brookfield 2001, 174) and
denies a role to nonhuman forces. A nature -society dichotomy is evi-
dent in more recent versions as well. It is difficult to incorporate, fo r
example, Technosols as "nature" providing ecosystem services when it
is the actions of people in the past and/or present that have brought
about such potential "services." Such processes are made unintelligi.
ble. Relative to assessing soil degradation, recent global assessments
are even less helpful than GLASOD, as they have subordinated soil
assessments more explicitly under capitalist crop yield prerogatives.
It becomes increasingly difficult to disentangle actual soil degradation
processes from those of other "land" or "ecosystem service" variables
or from scores superimposed through productivity expectations in
GLADA or GLADIS databases. It appears that HWSD remains a more
reliable option, with all the above-described limitations and biases.

The Problems of and with Accelerated
Soil Erosion

Such major failings in global assessments should temper claims about
worldwide accelerated soil erosion. Thanks to the painstaking work
of hundreds of scientists over many decades, much is known about
the mechanisms involved and its widespread occurrence. But the evi-
dence about its extent and severity is highly disputable. The claims
are also helped little by a history of soil conservation failures due
to technocratically formulated and imposed policies insensitive to
both people using soils for their livelihood and contrary evidence
(Brookfield 2001; Ellis and Mellor 1995, 250; Hudson and Cheatle
1993; Roose 1996; Safriel 2007, 23; Stocking and Murnaghan 2000;
Zimmerer 1993). As in the case of "desertification" (Tengberg and
Batta Torheim 2007; Swift 1996), agricultural and environmental
policies as well as environmentalist arguments have been built around
this subject, at least since the 1920s, with a major resurgence in
the 1970s and attempts to resuscitate alarm over the past few years
(Bennett 1939; Brown 2010; Brown and Wolf 1984; Carter and
Dale 1974; Eckholm 1976; Hyams 1952; Jacks and Whyte 1939;
Mitchell 1946; Montgomery 2008; Osborn 1948; Sears 1935; Vogt
1948). The treatment of erosion as separable from other types of soil
degradation, historical insensitivity to variable and shifting combina-
tions of ecological and social processes, disproportionate attention

Soil Degradation

to accelerated erosion at the expense of more pernicious forms of
soil degradation (e.g., acid-sulfate soil activation), and major method-
ological and analytical flaws in soil erosion research all obscure from
public view the social basis and political content of soil degradation
res earch. Instead of confronting and attempting to resolve these prob-
lems, prominent environmentalists (e.g., Brown 2010; Leahy 2008;
WorldWatch Institute 15 ; World Wildlife Fund 16 ) and academics (e.g.,
Montgomery 2007b; Pimentel 2006; Wild 2003, 70) continue to
disconnect soil erosion from social context and to treat it as if a
straightforward arithmetical matter. The soil erosion emphasis also
enjoys wide institutional backing. The European Commission's Join
Research Centre places soil erosion at the top of the list of its identi-
fied threats to soils, 1 while the FAO's Land Degradation Assessment
and the USDA (2011) report on soil resources includes erosion, but
no other form of soil degradation. 18

Global assessments are particularly deceptive. Based on a compart-
mentalized view of soil properties, degradational forms are mapped
as unrelated or independently occurring. Their respective geographi-
cal distribution is then used to make comparisons according to total
estimated area affected. Different types of soil degradation are thus
ranked and thereby accelerated erosion attains primacy of concern,
regardless of the dubious nature of what is being compared. Acceler-
ated erosion could occur or increase in severity because of chemical
and/or biological property degradation and/or changes in environ-
mental erosivity factors. For example, there could be a decline in
OM (biochemical properties) due to changes in cropping system or
acidification (chemical properties) could occur through long-term
urea fertilizer application. Either OM depletion or acidification can
lead to reduction in plant cover and greater soil erodibility. There can
also be cases in which wind and water erosivity increase over time (e.g.,
regional climate change) and raise erosion rates without appreciable
changes in erodibility factors (e.g., levels of OM). When accelerated
erosion is mapped without making such linkages explicit, it is unclear
whether the areas affected by accelerated erosion are cases of physical,
biological, and/or chemical varieties of degradation. There is often
an overlap in the forms of soil degradation, making any neat separa-
tion of degradation categories suspect and creating potential for false
comparisons. Therefore, ranking soil degradation types according to
total estimated area affected (e.g., GLASOD) risks exaggerating some
problems at the expense of others or misidentifying the soil degra-
dation problem altogether. If a problem is low pH and heavy metals
toxicity leading to sparse vegetation and increasing erosion rates, it

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

would make little sense to try to fix the problem through afforestation
without liming.

There is also often a tendentious framing of the problem by way
or partial accounting and dubious assumptions regarding erosion and
deposition processes. Typically, the soil erosion story begins with the
painstakingly slothful pace of breakdown of rocks and minerals that
is necessary to form soils (Lai 1990, 3). This commonly held view
erases the soil -forming process of mineral and organic material addi-
tions (Chapter 2). One must studiously ignore the large amounts and
movements of available sediment (e.g., dust from beach and desert
dunes, floodplain deposits, material from eroding soils themselves)
to be able to claim that only rock weathering is invok ed in making
soils (Blum, Warkentin, and Frossard 2006; Douglass and Bockheim
2006; Muhs et ad. 2010; Simonson 1995; Yaalon 1987). Since soils
form out of both breakdown and deposition of materials, it is decep-
tive to pit erosion rates against rates of weathering (e.g., Hillel 2008,
3; Montgomery 2007a, 13-14), especially when soil erosion can con-
tribute to forming other soils. The pedogenic outcomes of moving
soil and sediment need not be exaggerated, however. Typically, dis-
lodged particles do not travel far from the source, although they may
enrich soils downslope temporarily (until the next erosive event), and
dust deposition usually contributes marginal amounts of fresh material
within human life spans (Boardman 2006; Verheijen et al. 2009).

Weathering and accumulation processes may nevertheless be much
faster than imagined, as recent research demonstrates, and it could
even be argued human impact may cause accelerated soil formation,
as in the case of farming-induced mudstone and shale weathering
in Sichuan Basin, China (Wei et al. 2006). Rates of 5-10 mm per
year of soil formation (15-20 cm of soil thickness over less than
30 years) were observed in the Ouachita Mountains, US, resulting
from bedrock exposure by way of dam spillway construction ( Phillips,
Turkington, and Marion 2008). This may vindicate Brookfield (2001,
90), who observes that "the rapidity of topsoil formation has not
yet been fully recognized by those who write doom-filled scenarios
about soil erosion." However, Stockman et al. (2010) found much
slower weathering rates of about 0.010 mm per year in Werrikimbe
National Park, Australia, which are found to be typical of the region.
Dust deposition has only recently been taken into account, but
studies of deposited particles influx into various parts of Southern
Europe, mainly from the Sahara Desert (Mulitza et al. 2010), indi-
cate a range of 0.0002-0.03 mm per year (0.002-0.39 1 ha" 1 ), which,
combined with weathering rates, give a range of soil production i

Soil Degradation

0 031-0.108 mm per year (0.4-1.4 1 ha" 1 ) (Verheijen et al. 2009,
28-29). 19 Soil formation rates are highly variable and tend to be
faster at the beginning, slowing down as soils become deeper. Pre-
sumably, dust deposition becomes more important in older soils, but
in some cases one should factor in anthropogenic deposits, which can
be considerable but are under-researched (e.g., large earth movements
in ancient sites like Cahokia or machine-aided sediment movement
through mining and construction). Aside from these aspects, data on
soil formation is unavailable for many regions and they reflect a variety
of time periods, from hundreds of thousands of years ago to the last
few decades.

Accelerated soil erosion can still be conceivably compared to known
soil formation rates, but one must be very careful when doing such
analyses. Montgomery (2007b) has been one of the few scholars com-
piling existing studies to construct overall assessments of global net
erosion rates, although concentrating on farming alone and only on
water driven erosion. He concludes that conventional farming has
been the most effective erosive agent, outstripping soil formation
by ten to 100 times. Many forms of "conservation agriculture" and
even no-till industrialized agriculture (only about 5 percent of global
cropland is managed with no-till techniques) are in the range of geo-
logical rates of soil erosion, but still exceed rates of erosion under
native vegetation. Verheijen et al. ( 2009), putting together many stud-
ies on agriculturally induced erosion from different parts of Europe,
similarly find that soil loss rates reach about 0.231-3.08 mm a -1
(3-40 1 ha -1 a -1 ). These put the figures to twice to 100 times soil for-
mation rates. The overall aim of these researchers is, among other
things, to show that current mainstream farming techniques have to
be changed to achieve sustainable land use and that the rates of ero-
sion currently acceptable at institutional levels, the T variable ( "soil
loss tolerance"), are too high (the T factor is one variable in the not
so "universal soil loss equation," see Blaikie 1985 ).

This may indeed be too high, but assigning an absolute global
figure to acceptable soil loss rates, in a bewildering array of diverse
contexts, is to court disaster. In the first instance, an absolute T value
is insensitive to soil type and cropping system. As Stocking remarks:

One centimetre of erosion may cause yields to crash on a very susceptible soil
(a Luvisol, for example) yet have little effect on a well-drained, high fertility
day (a Nitosol), and may even cause yields to increase on another soil (e.g. a
duplex soil with greater exposure of clays with better water capacity).

(Stocking 1996, 149)

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

This is borne out by many studies showing differential effects fo,
similar rates of erosion depending on crops grow n and soil type (]?
1990, 1995; Langdale and Shrader 1982; Tengberg, Stocking, gT
Dechen 1997). There also may occur, at times, downslope and late^
soil nutrient enrichment resulting from soil erosion ( Quinton et al
2010; Verheijen et al. 2009, 30), depending on the eroded matciijjj
content. 20 Accelerated soil erosion also does not necessarily result
crop failure, as often assumed. There are many factors involved, such
as changes in soil chemical and biological properties, weather patterns
and inter-species relations (e.g., rising pathogen populations), amon*
other environmental variables (Nachtergaele 2004). If one takes into
consideration multiple possible uses for the same soil besides domesti.
cated crop cultivation, then the political repercussions of soil erosion
discourse come to even fuller view, especially when mainstream (J
money-generating) cropping systems are overwhelmingly assumed
subjects worthy of soil erosion research. Entire people's life -ways arc
thereby summarily dismissed.

Closer inspection of existing soil erosion data reveals that the
results, including comparative studies of areas under native vegeta-
tion and cultivation, are largely derived from small plot experiments,
sediment yield measurements, and lake sediment analyses, all of which
are notoriously unreliable sources, at least for decadal time scales.
Global assessments of soil erosion in any case presume the sort of
data availability that is restricted to very few areas of the world. One
could still work with the many existing empirical and/or estima-
tion models, including the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation, 21
to derive total net erosion rates and test them against measurements
in different physical environments, provided methodologies are suf-
ficiently encompassing and comparable (Boardman 2006; Merritt,
Letcher, and Jakeman 2003; Renard et al. 1996). However, such
models cannot account for wind erosion, nor the wide-ranging fates of
eroded material (Stocking 1996) and the spatially and temporally vari-
able connectivity and distribution of erosivity and erodibility factors
( Weltz, Kidwell, and Fox 1998). Summing the measured or estimated
figures cannot therefore yield reliable information about net losses
beyond at most a small area.

Verheijen et al. readily admit and summarize the well-known prob-
lems with such data, but Montgomery is regrettably not as forthcom-
ing. The major problems with such estimation techniques and field
measurements cannot be assumed to represent the outcomes of land
use, especially when it is diverse and shifting. When eroded soil mate-
rial lodged at short distance from the source area is counted as part of

Soil Degradation

total soil loss, overestimation ensues. Relying on fluvial sediment load
to gauge soil erosion is even worse. The sediment comes from the
entire river catchment, not just areas directly used by people. Fluvial
sediment load figures also give undifferentiated total losses from many
different places in the river catchment (the total area covered by a river
an d its tributaries). Soil particles detached by water or wind can settle
It some points in a landscape for a while and then be moved again,
eventually, perhaps, reaching a river. The sediment derived from soil
erosion in fact may not even reach a stream. It may get stuck along
the way, depending on the geometry of the slope (if the slope is ini-
tially steep and then grades slightly upwards, for example). Then it
may linger for enough time to lay the basis for the formation of a
new soil, unless erosive forces are strong enough to dislodge them
again. River sediment information also does not evince which soils
have been thinned within the catchment and by how much. The vol-
ume of sediment in a river does not represent the volume of topsoil
lost, nor does it help indicate the location of eroded soils (Beach
1994; Boardman 2006; Forsyth 2003, 29-32; Lai 1990, 190-191;
Reij, Scoones, and Toulmin 1996, 1-4; Stocking 1987, 1996; Trimble
and Crosson 2000; Zimmerer 1994).

There are yet other problems with global or continent-scale esti-
mates derived from compilation of case studies from small areas
or sediment movement in rivers. Montgomery's approach is par-
ticularly faulty. He asserts that cultivation largely magnifies erosion
rates to those of alpine slope levels, which contradicts his findings
that posit conservation techniques almost on a par with both geo-
logical and native vegetation erosion rates. In fact, were one to
follow Montgomery's numbers to their logical conclusion, people
should give up farming altogether. Moreover, he fails to explain why
native vegetation erosion rates are sometimes lower and sometimes
higher than geological rates in his figures. His assumption that soil
depth must result from a balance between production and erosion
rates would also preclude the possibility of soils ever disappearing,
which should be considered absurd. Given that soil formation occurs
through both weathering and material additions over time, the over-
all soil erosion process cannot be discerned by restricting the sample
ot available studies to past soils that are presumed dynamically stable.
The research must include studies of sediments and their distribu-
tion over time. In other words, the study does not address the origins
ot the material that led to soil formation. The author rails to con-
sider and discuss what happens to sediment derived from eroding
soils over a geological time frame. 22 The case studies Montgomery

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

impressively compiled, therefore, are biased against even posing this
sort of question.

Comparing geological erosion rates with those related to agricul.
ture is a dubious undertaking for several additional reasons. Farming
encompasses activities and impacts that have varied tremendously over
time and space and cannot be reduced to a conservation-conventional
dichotomy in the present. Nor can the matter be viewed logically i n
terms of tanners' techniques alone. An ensuing potential for greater
erosion is not due to whether farmers' techniques are of the conser-
vation or conventional variety. The same set of cultiv ation techniques
becomes soil preserving or destructive according to changing environ-
mental dynamics and social arrangements, which are not necessarily
correlated (Berglund 2007, 113; Brookfield 2001; Forsyth 2003,
224-225; Vandermeer, Shiva, and Perfecto 1995 ). What this all meam
is that if one focuses on cultivation techniques as the main cause (land
management), it is not possible to determine whether even the same
land management practices are consistently soil-conserving. Other fac-
tors must also be studied before concluding that human activities
cause accelerated soil erosion.

These underlying difficulties in measuring soil erosion rates can
have major political implications. They can lead and have led to imple-
menting policies that are socially harmful. To add insult to historical
injury, many soil scientists and policy-makers continue to portray espe-
cially Africa as overwhelmed by erosion. These kinds of claims, to
some extent, continue a long tradition of self-serving exaggeration
started by colonial authorities and scientists in the early twentieth
century (Bell and Roberts 1991; Showers 2005; Swift 1977). Kiage
(2013), in a critical review, shows nonhuman erosivity and erodibility
factors as playing a much greater, if not, in some cases, a determining
role in accelerated erosion rates in Africa. It might then be advan-
tageous for farmers not to regard soil erosion as a priority, as it is
sometimes lamented. The main concerns of most farmers is produc-
ing a good quality yield of crops, enough at least for subsistence and,
in the case of commercial farming, enough yield to make a profit or
just pay the bills. Often, farmers do not necessarily see a connection
between soil erosion and soil fertility, even when there is one, espe-
cially because there tends to be a lag between erosion and fertility
decline (Brookfield 2001) or they may already have an understand-
ing and appreciation of the process without scientists' aid (Zimmerer
1993). What complicates matters is that erosion is not a process that
necessarily leads to crop yield decline. Some forms of erosion may
even be beneficial to soil fertility when soils receive nutrient additions

Soil Degradation

from upslope. Great care should be taken, then, in erosion assess-
ment, especially as they feed into policy formulations, and it would
be more effective (relative to efforts against actually problematic ero-
sion) to understand the issue in social and ecological context, rather
than treating it as always necessarily negative.

Even it one were to take mainstream interpretations of erosion
as entirely credible, anti-erosion measures can end up addressing
only part of the presumed problem. In the US, for instance, poli-
cies have been introduced, as subsidies mainly to agribusinesses, to
have farm businesses set erodible land out of production for ten years,
with rive-year conservation plans (Farm Act, 1985). The debt to the
state is erased if erodible land or wetlands are taken out of produc-
tion for 50 years. The conservation standards have been eased since
1987 and since 1996 businesses are allowed to end contracts with-
out USDA consent (the other party to the contract). If one were to
follow the concerns over soil erosion from many soil scientists and
find no flaws in conventional measures, US soil erosion (2.31 mm a -1
or 30tha -1 a -1 ) continues on average at eight times the rate of soil
formation (if not more, according to Montgomery 2007b, and Cox,
Hug, and Bruzelius 2011) in spite of all conservation efforts and
putatively drastic erosion rates curtailment (Lai et al. 2004). It seems
that there is a substantial discrepancy in the evidence presented and
the interpretations of the effectiveness of policy. Yet even if policies
had been effective, they would address 60 percent of the susceptible
land area (FAOSTAT 2006 ). The remaining sources of anthropogenic
erosion are not farming-related, so these scientific works, as well as
conservation efforts and subsidies (mainly to wealthy farmers) ignore
some key sources of erosion, like the construction of large indus-
trial and residential sites and large scale mining operations. In light of
this and the above discussion, decrying farming as the main cause of
accelerated soil erosion exemplifies the limited (and socially unaware)
understanding of many well-meaning scientists.

Resisting Peak Soil

Wider awareness of the trouble with soil erosion evidence is ham-
pered by catchy "peak soil" repackaging. The new branding scheme
has even found favor in some left-leaning and unabashedly leftist out-
lets (Ahmed 2013; Fitz 2013; Leahy 2008; Montgomery 2008 ). The
argument, as simple as it is simplistic, is a regurgitation of what has
been claimed about fossil fuels combined with what some soil scien-
tists have been claiming for decades: that soils are eroding worldwide

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

faster than they are formed. The new twist is to reframe the erosion
problem in light of more popular concerns about climate change such
that, as in the case of oil, we are approaching the global exhaustion
of soils as a resource. The trouble is that consumption rates do not
govern oil reserves availability as much as global political struggle
over resource control, involving processes like oligopolies and futures
markets. Peak oil arguments detract attention from the relations of
exploitation inhering the production and consumption of oil as a com-
modity and from the struggles necessary to overcome the social forces
imposing fossil fuel dependence in the first place (Labban 2008). Peak
oil or, more recently "peak appropriation" arguments (Moore 2011^
138) also foreclose the possibility of developing alternatives that can
build on and replace fossil fuels (Schwartzman 2009, 18).

The notion of peak soil is similarly tenuous and diversionary in
resting on unreliable GLASOD figures and in obfuscating the sets
of exploitative relations that lead to accelerated soil erosion (Blaikie
1985). There are also crucial differences. Unlike oil, soil can be
formed within human life spans, people can facilitate and speed up
soil production, and soil can be used without it running out. Some of
these differences have been obvious even to mainstream economists
(e.g., Timmons 1979, 54), but there are other fundamental flaws. The
peak soil argument does not distinguish constructive from destruc-
tive cases of accelerated erosion and it exaggerates one form of soil
degradation at the expense of others, like salinization and acidification.

It is sobering to find such poor understandings of soil dynam-
ics in leftist work. The prolific eco-Marxist sociologist Foster (1994,
23-24) explains that since "forests form soils," deforestation induces
soil erosion, demonstrating an embarrassing lack of understanding.
But such a remark also obscures soil-forming aspects of human impact,
as when deforested slopes are terraced. Implicitly denying this has the
unfortunate effect of converging with technocrats on matters of cau-
sation, according to which people tend mostly to contribute to soil
destruction. The lack of appreciation for human-induced pedogenesis
or for constructive contribution towards soil formation is much more
evident in other leftist writings (Mazoyer and Roudart 2006, 55-60).

Equally uninformed, Klare (2013, 186, 194-195), a contributor
to the U.S. center-left weekly The Nation, constructs a scenario of
dwindling soil resources coveted and in the process of being taken
over by large firms and powerful governments, in a race to grab all
the natural resources left. Aside from, among other problems, the
tenuous empirical basis for his argument as well as the erasure of
social movements and struggles (only corporations and governments

Soil Degradation

exist in Klare's world), Klare also falls for the peak-soil antics (and
populationism) of Brown ( 2003 ), leading Klare to the conclusion that
CJ pitalists and governments are craving cropland that is disappear-
ing everywhere due to accelerated erosion. It is difficult to believe
that corporations or governments would be primarily motivated by
assertions about global soil erosion ( other forms of soil degradation
being apparently irrelevant) and population growth, rather than, say,
competition over profits.

Ultimately, soil erosion, as soil degradation generally, should be a
matter of finding out the politics of land access and use in relation to
wider processes, which can reveal why people are using soils in cer-
tain ways (Stocking and Murnaghan 2000). On that basis, the rate of
soil erosion can be more meaningfully determined as accelerated or
no t relative to local conditions. Peak soil and other such arguments
denv the possibility- of officially unrecognized soil experts (e.g., peas-
ants) participating in determining whether and to what degree a soil
degradation problem exists. They are the sort of simplistic general-
izations that may find easy purchase towards political mobilization,
but are as reactionary as technocratic and colonial interventions. One
need not, in contrast, develop paranoid delusions about soil erosion
as a government centralization ploy, as neoliberal capitalist ideologues
like Lindert (2000, 243) insinuate. Calling for soil scientists to find
"a consensus on mean rates of soil formation and soil erosion" in the
face of a dearth of information ( Verheijen et al. 2009, 27) can only fan
the flames of skeptics who see scientists and governments conspiring
to ruin the welfare of the small capitalist family farmer, an entity 7 that
at this point is largely imaginary (see Goodman and Redclift 1989).

In spite of all the diversions and technical difficulties, there actually
is sufficient evidence for accelerated soil erosion and its connection
to declining plant life and biodiversity in various parts of the world
(e.g., Boardman 2013; Montgomery 2007b; Stocking 2003). A lack
of worldwide monitoring and poor global assessment, as well as misuse
of existing evidence, does not support any single view about the extent
and magnitude of the problem. If anything, it should make people
clamor for more research in more places. Known or experiment-based
accelerated soil erosion disasters (Boardman 2006; Tengberg, Stock-
ing, and Dechen 1997) should stimulate more concern, not baseless
generalizations about what may be happening more broadly. Instead
ot waiting until there are enough numerical data and analyses before
elaborating policies of soil conservation, it would be more reason-
able to learn from existing conservation practices and to facilitate their
strengthening or diffusion in tune with ecosystems and social context.

90 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

There are, after all, not a few examples of what happens when one
waits until sufficient data are gathered and analyzed for quantitative
trends. For example, the effects of greenhouse gases, chlorofluoro.
carbons, sulfate and nitrous oxide emissions on the atmosphere and
on various ecosystems were known long before it became clear they
would be regional or global in reach. There is already enough knowl-
edge about human impact on soils (primarily through case studies)
that one need not wait until a thorough global database is available
before dealing with the problem, by which time it would be too late.
Complaints about the costs of and resistance to monitoring and con-
servation policy implementation need to be considered in a context
of class struggles, rather than taken at face value (Bone et al. 2012) )
and any prospect of monitoring from below, as promising as it can
be for democratizing scientific knowledge production, must be care-
fully weighed against the possibility 7 of its degeneration into an often
gendered and racialized socialization of damage resulting from envi-
ronmental impacts associated with profits for the few (e.g., Carney
1991; Schroeder 1999).

An Alternative Way of Approaching Soil

Degradation

One strategy to circumvent currently unreliable and market- ideology
influenced global, regional, and other such assessments is to follow
the likes of Montgomery (2007b) and Verheijen et al. (2009) in
compiling data from existing publications or to use archival infor-
mation to reconstruct historical changes in soil characteristics in
specific areas of the world. This could give a sense of greater accu-
racy, but doing so will not address the underlying presuppositions
behind the process of identifying soils as degraded, presuppositions
that are helpful neither in the interpretation of soil dynamics nor
in identifying actual cases of soil degradation. A modified version
of Blaikie and Brookfield's Net Degradation model 23 would already
be an improvement because it includes both human and nonhuman
impacts, either negative or positive (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987,
7; Brookfield 2001, 174). Combining that model with that of soil
resilience offered by Lai (1994, 44 ) 24 could improve matters, as it is
more specific and takes into account processes unrelated to human
impact (but inexplicably excludes, unlike Brookfield's model, con-
structive human impact within the same ecosystem). However, both
types of model fail to account for social context. Blaikie and Brookfield
(1987, 4) themselves recognize this when they regard degradation

Soil Degradation

aS a conjuncture-dependent "perceptual term." No existing model
c ontextualizes the consequences or wider meaning of degradation
according to both ecological and social context. Depending on cir-
cumstances, the same type of impact may be degrading in one context
and enhancing in another.

One could then draw from Hynes' (1993, 44-46) insightful fem-
inist critique and agency -foe used reformulation of the human impact
formula. 25 A soil degradation equation could be made similarly con-
tingent by, for example, qualifying net degradation according to local
social needs. For instance, high net degradation involving upslope ero-
sion can be a positive figure for downslope farming communities. But
then one would also have to address existing and shirting contestation
over what is regarded as priority within and/or between communi-
ties, including within households. Inevitably, the issue would be about
how land use decisions are made and the power relations at multiple
scales that affect land use outcomes. This implies being forthcoming
about one's political commitments and taking great care to examine
local power relations in relation to one's social position. Consequently,
other steps are needed to make soil assessments relevant to actual
conditions.

A first step is to recognize soil degradation as both an ecological
and political question. This means that a soils expert must become
aw are not only of the various processes inherent to soil dynamics,
but also of the social context in which soils are used (and in the
process, of one's own social context and how it influences one's under-
standing of soils). It also entails being forthcoming about political
commitments and convictions relative to the people who derive direct
sustenance from using soils and to the social context at large. Most
scientists studying the issue are in one way or another in agreement
with the currently prevailing capitalist arrangements, at least tacitly.
Their task then is to understand the ramifications of their political
stance and to study how it relates to their understanding of soils and
what they regard as proper use of soils. By doing this, they might find
that reducing soils to production units for some market is not exactly
the most appropriate route to soil preservation, even as they might
not realize the connections between profit making and the exploita-
tion, health debilitation, and even mass murder involved in the course
of regular business, whether in the home, the field, the factory, the
orfice, the prison, or the warzone. If one's political persuasion is leftist,
the task might instead be evaluating competing uses (and one's own
preconceptions) relative to actually existing soil properties and pro-
moting non-capitalist uses of soils, while at the same time being careful

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

to avoid supporting oppressive relations of power compatible with
ecologically constructive impacts on soils, such as patriarchal arrange-
ments (Bradley 1983; Engel-Di Mauro 1999; Leach and Fairhead
1995; Reij, Scoones, and Toulmin 1996).

A second step is to seek information and analyze data not only
about soils, their historical development, inherent properties, and
current state, but also about different or convergent local soil uses,
understandings of soils, and relations of power (e.g., economic inter-
ests, political struggles within and between households, formal insti-
tutions). This latter aspect involves necessarily finding out about
local social processes, being mindful of relations of domination when
inquiring among local inhabitants or neighbors. This step necessarily
means getting information on how local social dynamics are affected
by linkages to places sometimes very far away. This is a more diffi-
cult task than field and laboratory analyses of soils, but it is necessary
to gain an overview of contrasting perspectives and impacts on soils.
This way of proceeding assists in arriving at an understanding of the
status of a soil relative to various social positions and to one's own.

In a leftist-oriented soil quality assessment, there can be no defini-
tive characterization of a soil as degraded. This in itself precludes
much of the technocratic pretense of detached objectivity' and of the
bureaucratization of assessment procedures because such an approach
to soil degradation demands interaction between soils experts and
soil-using communities and the combination of different forms of
soils knowledge. The process, being iterative, is mutually constitutive.
A scientist's view and everyday analytical practices will necessarily have
to change alongside the practices and views of soils users. A soil is to
be regarded as degraded insofar as physiological needs and context-
specific objectives are hampered by a change in soil characteristics.
This requires specifying whose physiological needs and objectives are
being hampered and when. On this basis, much more realistic pedo-
logically and socially differentiated evaluations can be made of soil
quality.

In The Gambia, those benefiting from wet rice cultivation through
the imposition of large-scale irrigation projects might not regard the
resulting water-table reduction and acid-sulfate soil activation as a
degradation problem as much as those growing crops on alluvial soils
in tidal flats (Carney 1991, 43; Engel-Di Mauro 2012a). Ascribing a
degraded status to such soils is to critique the political scheme that
brought the expansion of cash-cropping as wet rice. It can be an
implicit way of siding with those displaced by the imposed irrigation
project and against the multi-national institutions behind it. Becoming

Soil Degradation

gware of this enables the sort of interaction with Mandinka commu-
nities that helps identify which soils are useful in maintaining local
livelihoods (which may not be organized in an egalitarian manner, and
this w ould be another political struggle that would have to be based
0 n local understandings, not a superimposed Eurocentric notion of
socialism) and which soils require attention for remediation relative to
subsistence, rather than marketable crop yield, bearing in mind that
the two production orientations, subsistence and profitability, may
coincide at some point in time and not in others.

Accelerated erosion by way of mass movement is not only an under-
appreciated process (Bennett 1939, 281-298; Blaschke, Trustrum,
and Hicks 2000), but over small areas can be beneficial to creating
cropping systems downslope in steeply sloped areas, like the Chimbu
district in Papua New Guinea (Brookfield 2001, 166). To claim this
soil-forming process as a form of soil degradation would not only be to
deny the pedogenic value of Chimbu practices, but also to ask for, in
a context of national state and foreign capitalist intrusion, the possible
marginalization of the Chimbu people with the excuse of soil conser-
vation. And it would be the marginalization particularly of the women
in those communities who do most of the crop growing related to
accelerating erosional movement in limited areas. An iterative process
between a soil scientists and Chimbu soil users, as well as with Chimbu
communities generally, generates the possibility of determining the
kinds of soils that are degraded relative to fulfilling the attainment of
physiological well-being for everyone in a community 26 and to shifting
and contrasting local objectives.

A third and final step is to describe soil status (quality) according
to whether it helps fulfil everyone's needs in a community and con-
tributes to developing or maintaining egalitarian relations. Those who
continue to apply conventional (absolutist) notions of soil degradation
superimpose preconceived notions of productivity and are assuming
a political stance that can contribute to deleterious consequences
to local inhabitants and that can lead to counterproductive measure
in terms of soil conservation (e.g., Bell and Roberts 1991; Blaikie
1985; Reij, Scoones, and Toulmin 1996). If a database were to be
constructed from such information, it would have to enable input
resulting from discussions with people living with the described soils
and incorporate a redefinition of soil degradation as contingent on
local circumstances. This implies giving up the idea of making units
comparable for global assessments on the basis of abstract, decon-
textualized biomass indices or ecosystem provisioning, as currently
in vogue. Places would have to be compared relative to eco-social

94 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

context, so that it will be possible to discern constructive from
destructive human and nonhuman impacts, relative to different social
positions. It is admittedly difficult to develop a mathematical model
that could represent this endeavor and perhaps it is best to avoid such
model building for this kind of analysis. The advantage of this p ro .
posed perspective is that it is possible to recognize the same alterations
on comparable soil types in different parts of the w orld as negative
in one place and positive in another, something current prevailing
approaches to soil degradation assessment seem unable to fathom
(cf. Bakker et al. 2008).

To some extent, this alternative road has already been charted by
others, especially by way of enabling substantive input from below and
the combining of different kinds of knowledge (e.g., Reij, Scoones
and Toulmin 1996; Stocking and Murnaghan 2000). Even among
more mainstream scientists, there is sometimes an awareness of wider
social contexts wherein soil degradation is understood. Verheijen et al.
(2009, 29) recognize that under Marshall Plan conditions, following
World War II, acceptable rates of accelerated soil erosion were pinned
to their effects on crop yield in Western Europe, rather than total
soil volume or habitat for other organisms. Of course, there is little
understanding shown by these scientists that productionism was asso-
ciated with the expansion of agribusinesses (i.e., profitability) and a
sometimes directly violent reconfiguration of capitalist relations in the
farming sector (e.g., police shootings of farmers protesting for land
redistribution in Italy in the 1940s and 1950s), but at least there is an
inkling of awareness about historical social change and how it affects
scientific practice. Boardman (2006, 75) also sees that soil degrada-
tion beckons asking questions that "stray from the strictly scientific
arena." However, such neat isolation of science from societv produces
some amusing lapses. Consistent with this view of science, he can
envisage human impact free of social processes. It is thus that he can
misrepresent Blaikie's (1985) thesis as the "recognition that degrada-
tion occurs because of people-land relationships often involving social
and economic opportunities and constraints" (Boardman 2006, 74).
At this point, one may well speak of people birthing themselves.'

The underlying problem is that viewing science as if separable from
the rest of society impedes scientists' ability to look critically upon
their own practices and notions and see just how political they are.
There is an inherent contradiction between a claim of value-free state-
ments (neutrality, objectivity) and the actual and unavoidable practice
of taking sides (for preserving soils, for the superioritv of a scien-
tific approach, for or against defining soil loss according to crop yield

Soil Degradation

re quirements, etc.). More critically minded scientists understand the
internal contradictions imposed by such an ideology of science, but
have to tread a fine line in the context of a majority of scientists
and institutions that uphold the self-serving mythology of scientific
objectivity. There is hence an understandable reticence in coming out
politically in a social milieu pervaded by often reactionary political
convictions, whose existence is denied or brushed under the carpet of
value-free science. However, in the left generally, there is little to no
support for scientific work on physical environments. This may be one
reason for a lack of development of clearer linkages (not subordina-
tion of one to the other ) made between leftist politics and scientific
approaches to environmental degradation.

Chapter 5

Capitalism-Friendly
Explanations of Soil
Degradation

A feature article to a National Geographic special on soils (Mann
2008) begins with a photograph of a showcase soil conservation suc-
cess story from the Coon Creek catchment, SW Wisconsin (U.S.).
This is contrasted on the following page with another photograph
from the loess Plateau of Northern China, a landscape ripped apart
by massive gullies tens of meters deep. This is followed by images of
people associated with different land uses and soil in four countries:
U.S., China, Niger, and Syria. The story starts with Wisconsin farmers
operating heavy equipment that tends to result in soil compaction.
The next stop is Dazhai, famous for the controversial self-reliance
farming campaign of the 1960s, where replacing forests with cereal
crops eventuated in a soil erosion disaster. Successful counterbalanc-
ing experiences since the 1980s at Gaoxigou, not too far from Dazhai,
are quickly recast as largely ineffective because of inadequate or per-
verse incentives imputed to centralization (cf. Ho 2003). The reader
is then whisked away to the Sahel and introduced to the prolonged
drought that turned huge areas into famine-provoking degradation.
Thankfully, the reader is spared invectives against pastoralists (the
livestock overstocking thesis) that used to pervade writings on the
Sahel. Instead, costly mega-projects such as those in Keita, Niger, are
described as ultimately self-defeating and contrasted with existing and
more effective indigenous water conservation techniques. Drvland
farming in Syria never materializes. Instead, and suddenly, attention is
draw n to miracle carbon-grabbing human-made soils, the Amazon's

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

terra preta, deemed to help save the w orld from global warming
We learn here that tropical country poverty is partly due to gener
ally nutrient-poor soils, which could be overturned through judicious
incorporation of charcoal, as Indigenous Peoples once did, to create
terra preta. Improving the lot of "the poor" — colonialism, slavery, and
genocide treated as inconsequential as relations of domination within
countries — will compensate for the planet's trashing by "the rich.*
This sanguine interpretation of the w orld is then brought back to th e
continuing problems in Europe and Euro-descendant settler colonies
in North America, where apparently soil compaction reigns. A com-
ment from David Montgomery completes the article with a warning
that world population growth will force us all to pay attention to soil.
Throughout this stern yet hopeful treatment of soil degradation, one
is given the impression that if only people were to have more direct
control over land, soil degradation could be prevented and degraded
soils reclaimed more effectively.

This whirlwind soil degradation tour captures much of the imagi-
nary among concerned scientists and environmentalists, likely at odds
with most government officials and technocratic academics who tend
to blame locals for environmental problems. It is a political expedient
that only sees ill-conceived incentives and policies as main stumbling
blocks to resolving soil degradation problems. In much environmen-
talist narrative, the matter is about restoring a presumed lost harmony
with soils. In other, technocratic versions, it is to pave the way for
continued prosperity or to enable sheer survival in the face of demo-
graphic overshoot. It is a simple, almost Manichaean world. Even the
well-intentioned bureaucrat is tangled in a bundle of "Political and
economic institutions . . . not set up to pay attention to soils" (Mann
2008, 106), in contrast to the local farmers and allied enlightened
do-gooders that usually know best. Remove the cumbersome or inap-
propriate government hurdles, presumably by tweaking laws, and soil
degradation will eventually go away.

This division of the world into two camps — the small and local
against the big and foreign — is reinforced in the subsequent one -page
report on Haiti (Bourne 2008), where at least the odious history of
slavery and post-independence repression by France is acknowledged
(not so with multiple US invasions and dictatorships, past and cur-
rent). Food shortages are partially blamed on centuries of soil erosion
and partially blamed on unfavorable international price imbalances.
A USAID director's recommendation to sell mangoes and import rice
is pitted against an NGO ecologist advocating for greater local food
production to solve hunger. And so it is that in this fable the cavalier

Capitalism -Friendly Explanations

fleets the ingenuous in a strange landscape of fatally eroded soils that
s omchow provides enough mangoes for export or enough rice to fill
local empty bellies. Instead of overthrowing foreign and local cap-
italist domination, securing reparations from colonial powers, taking
0 ver and redistributing land, and seeking the establishment of egalitar-
ian communities, Haitians are supposed to accept either a plantation
system or a meagre diet. It may be of little coincidence that oppressed
Haitians are excluded from this dialogue, even figuratively.

Conventional soil science abounds in such ready-made dualistic
representations of the w orld. However, this (petit bourgeois) defense
of the small and local against the big and foreign is the obverse of a
once overwhelmingly predominant (technocratic capitalist) reprimand
of the farmer (or land user, presumed ignorant and/or over-breeding)
bv the knowledgeable and far-seeing expert. What is considered supe-
rior to one ideological position is inferior to the other. There are
those that attempt to balance two of the components involved (farm-
ers and scientists) by invoking the importance of local knowledge in
combination with an external science, and I have already discussed
these ethnopedological viewpoints, but such endeavors do little more
than reinforce the dualism by turning the technocratic position into
one of paternalistic understanding. They also do not confront issues
of colonialism, multiple-scaled oppressive arrangements, and the like.
It is not the task here of tracing the histories of these two kinds ot
capitalist ideologies, but at least by identifying them one can start
appreciating how they affect soil science and the knowledge produced
there by.

Both kinds of dualisms are rendered possible by presuming a set
of separate, sometimes reified units without any history (e.g., farmer,
overshooting population, government, market) and connecting them
through cause-effect chains or feedback loops (e.g., incentives, poli-
cies, institutions, land management). It would not be possible to
maintain such dualisms if one were to acknowledge, for example, the
equally legitimate production of knowledge but differing objectives
involved in farming soil and explaining them scientifically or the over-
lap between using and studying soils common to both farming and
scientific communities (e.g., Altieri and Hecht 1990; Brookfield 2001;
Stocking 2003; Zimmerer 1993 )} Likewise, such dualism would fall
into disarray if one concentrated on the overarching processes beget-
ting markets, governments, and the like, and constituting social roles,
like farmer and scientist.

Arguments about soil degradation in soil science often tend to be
formalized via flowcharts and sometimes attempts are made to abstract

100

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

complexities through mathematical expressions or models. In them,
selves flowcharts, models, and equations are not problematic, if used
as aids in conveying an explanation or just to systematize information
or if they are developed to analyze processes as mutually constitu.
tive, focusing on interconnections and change. Levins and Lewontin
(1985, 146-147, 156-158), for instance, have demonstrated how
such analytical techniques can be put to dialectical use, so that contin-
gency on system structure, external influences, historical change, and
duration of observation can be addressed even with relatively simple
correlations of paired variables. Much of soil science (as all mainstream
sciences), in contrast, is not only replete with atomization of variables
or factors and reified structures (e.g., "the market," "soil fertility"),
but also pervaded by the systematic exclusion of key explanatory
factors, such as capitalist pressures for profit-making, gendered soil
use, and racist conservation policies. Worse, the inclusion of social
factors like "population density," "economy," or "government pol-
icy" are introduced without any justification, explanation, or analysis.
Most explanations of soil degradation are therefore reductionistic or
decontextualized abstractions, asserted preconceived notions about
the causal factors involved, such as "socio-economic status" and "soil
resilience." They are treated as if isolated from each other instead of
interconnected processes that participate in and are part of the making
of an overall structure, such as a complex of social relations and soils
(Levins and Lewontin 1985, 132-160).

In some respects, especially when it comes to social processes,
prevailing scientific explanations reflect, clothed in technical expert
language, the sort of common sense notions that appear in the pages
of newspapers or magazines like National Geographic, where histori-
cal analysis amounts to one-line descriptive statements (or succession
of facts) and the contending actors or forces virtually pop out of
nowhere. These devices imbue theories that scientific experts develop
to explain soil degradation and to formulate ideas about what to do
about soil degradation. They are often presented under expressions
like "causes of soil degradation" (e.g., Lai et al. 2004, 11; Steiner
1996) and presume an attendant effect, in unidirectional and often lin-
ear fashion. The task here then is to expose the problems with this kind
of unacknowledged theory-making because it leads to misidentifying
the (social) sources of the soil degradation problem and produces ill-
conceived notions of what should be done. Thankfully, this endeavor
can build on existing critiques of "received wisdom" directly rele-
vant to soil degradation (e.g., Leach and Mearns 1996; Zimmerer

Capitalism-Friendly Explanations

101

1993), but it is sobering to note that such facile argumentation on
soil degradation persists even while critical works are acknowledged
and praised, as in Boardman's deforming appropriation of Blaikie's
N vork (Boardman 2006).

Predominant Theories

pecades ago, Blaikie ( 1985, 53) identified four major forms of reason-
ing pervading conventional notions of soil conservation that emerged
from "a colonial, Euro-centric and messianic intellectual frame of
reference." These are (1) circumscribing the theme to issues of
physical environments, (2) presuming over-population as the prob-
lem, (3) blaming soil users (land managers) for mismanagement,
and/or (4) a lack of or not enough capitalism (see also Bernstein
and Woodhouse 2006). Blaikie was prescient in deeming "the the-
ory and practice of soil conservation" changing "often in directions
that are not very promising." It seems that the directions Blaikie
noted have culminated in a winnowing down to population pres-
sure and mismanagement narratives, with a resurgent civilizationist
(catastrophist) emphasis. The old technocratic trick of rejecting every-
thing out of hand that does not solely relate to physical environments
is more subdued these days, but remains a strong undercurrent.
There is in contrast much more venturing by soil scientists in reading
socially critical works or in considering social processes and incor-
porating them into their explanations of soil degradation. But soil
scientists' highly superficial understandings of societal research are
manifested in their misrepresentation and distortion of findings and
arguments. Capitalism is also now typically the undisputed point of
departure. After all, societies not overwhelmed by capitalist encroach-
ment are rare, especially since the early 1990s. This may be ironically
advantageous, as a few soil scientists, at least, are starting to pin
the destruction of soils to capitalism, even if, almost as a test of
faith, deprecating communism. Hence, salient forms of reasoning
have continued to be modified versions of demographic determinism
and managerialism, with an added preoccupation with "sustainability"
expressed as anxiety about the collapse of civilization. These three
modes of explanation are deeply inter-related. They all concentrate
on (if not blame) the least influential people or shift the analysis to
the least relevant processes. These are ways in which scientists actively
participate in the political project of denying the socially systemic
character to the problem of soil degradation.

102

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

Civilizationism

Many have appealed and continue to appeal to the specter of "civili^.
tion" collapse to justify their alarm or concern over soil degradation
(Bennett 1939; Carter and Dale 1974; Dregne 1982; Eckholm 1976-
Hillel 1991; Hyams 1952; Lai 1990, 10, 2007, 52; Lowdermilfc
1953; Minami 2009; Whitney 1925; Wild 2003, 23). There is actually
little to no evidence supporting this civilizationist variant of catas-
trophism, the contention that soil degradation in antiquity resulted
in collapse. The often cited collapse of Maya civilization, for exam-
ple, reveals the narrow-mindedness about what constitutes civilization
more than any linkage between soil degradation and social change.
To put the matter plainly, Maya civilization exists to this day and it
was conquest that led to its current condition (Sharer 2009, 762-763;
Turner and Sabloff 2012). Similarly spurious is the much cited lint
made by Lowdermilk (1953), based on little more than field obser-
vation, between soil degradation and the decline of southwest Asian
civilization (e.g., Sumer, Balylonia, Akkad). The timing leading to
such declines does not match up with soil degradation chronologies
or any putative soil erosion cycles, as often asserted (e.g., Hillel 1991;
Montgomery 2007a/b). A combination of other factors can just as
well explain their demise (e.g., Fernandez -Armesto 2001, 186-192;
Orland et al. 2008; Weiss et al. 1993).

In light of such argumentative sophistication, there appears to have
been little progress since the 1860s, with the relatively prescient mus-
ings on human impact by Elisee Reclus (1869, 753-757) or George
Perkins Marsh (1874, 6). They may not be renowned for any preoc-
cupation with soils, but they both realized the importance of social
oppression in spurring and shaping human environmental impact.
Closer to soils research, Milton Whitney, the first head of the USDA's
Bureau of Soils, viewed agriculture as contingent "in part upon the
climatic conditions, in part upon their soils, and in part upon the
inclination, skill, social conditions and political conditions of the men"
(1925, 185). The importance of political processes in determining the
trajectories of social systems in relation to environmental impact was
not lost to these earlier authors, unlike many current counterparts.
Lastly, and more importantly, bemoaning the loss of authoritarian,
often war-prone social systems (e.g., the Roman Empire, Babylonia)
shows what sordid politics civilizationists espouse. It is troubling to
find some leftists internalizing such inherently reactionary viewpoints
(Chew 2005; Foster 1994, 37-38; Magdoff and van Es 2000, 7;
Mazoyer and Roudart 2006, 182).

Capitalism -Friendly Explanations

103

Populationism

Civilizationist delirium aside, the main contention many of the same
above-cited authors posit is population growth causing soil degrada-
tion. Populationism, as Angus and Butler (2011, xxi) more precisely
describe it, is a set of "ideologies that attribute social and ecologi-
cal ills to human numbers. " It is a consummately racist patriarchal
argument that displaces a problem of capitalist relations mainly onto
women's bodies (Hynes 1993; Mies and Shiva 1993; Sachs 1996;
Salleh 1997). A common specious argument and perversity of the
evidence ( Schwartzman 2009, 30), it is even slipped in soil bio-
chemistry texts (e.g., Haide and Schaffer 2009, 54). One hardly
needs to travel to Machakos (Kenya), tamed for a study showing
soil stabilization with population growth, to find the incongruity of
populationism. The matter is transparent in areas such as the north-
ern banks of the Drava floodplain (Hungary ), where soil acidification
problems arose with a historically falling population (Engel-Di Mauro
2003). For an Andean area of Bolivia, Zimmerer (1993) showed
rising erosion rates resulting from labor shortages, rather than demo-
graphic expansion. A study conducted in the highlands of Thailand
showed population growth resulted neither in farming steeper slopes,
nor in deforestation (Forsyth 2003, 224-225 ). Fieri (1992, 114),
focusing on the West African savannah, describes the lack of cor-
respondence between soil fertility and population densities, explain-
ing the discrepancy by the fact that farming practice is a decisive
factor. Many other such cases exist and it is sheer obduracy to
insist on population pressure. It befits the sort of arguments Blaikie
and Brookfield (1987, 2) identified as "environmental fundamental-
ism," but their occurrence is more widespread than environmentalist
circles.

Montgomery's above-mentioned intervention in National Geo-
graphic well illustrates the populationism that pervades scientific
story-telling. Allusions to population growth as a major (if not the)
source of soil degradation is a repetitive refrain in soil science. How-
ever, soil science populationism is mainly perfunctory, unlike what has
been identified elsewhere (Harvey 1974; Hynes 1993; Smith 1996).
There is rarely any claim to resolving soil degradation through popula-
tion reduction. It is a rhetorical device enabling soil scientists to avoid
taking responsibility for the political content of their work, displac-
ing attention to matters at best indirectly relevant to the topic of soil
degradation. By doing so, they dissemble and caricature rather than
explain.

104

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

An eminent early and influential example is Hugh Hammond
Bennett, the founder of the US Soil Conservation Service. There
are other contemporary examples of populationist conservationist
studies by others, especially from areas under the British and French
Empires (e.g., Blaikie 1985; Swift 1977; van Beusekom 1999; f 0ra
St. Vincent exception, see Grossman 1997), but it seems that the
globally reaching US variant has not received due attention. Bennett,
embodying this variant, recognized the destructive tendencies of a
society-, the US, where soil is viewed "as a field for exploitation
and a source of immediate financial return" (Bennett 1939, 13)
He took account of this soil-degrading "commercial exploitation" ^
other areas of the world as well, such as "Ceylon" and "Netherlands
India," under British or Dutch rule (p. 919). Yet his description
of non-European societies is about population growth inducing
accelerated erosion, while his esteem was easily captured by mass-
murdering authoritarian regimes imposing soil conservation measures.
In "Africa," for example, "the native population. . .increased rapidly
with the establishment of peace and the control of disease" thanks
to "white settlement," but the natives' "primitive agriculture became
destructive" because of the decline in land available to them as a result
of "the influx of white settlers" (p. 922; see p. 918 for an South
Asian variation on the theme). However, he would reserve the tenn
"invaders," rather than "settlers," for conquering non-Europeans
(e.g., "Mohammedans"), and their invasions are framed often as a
direct cause of soil degradation (e.g., p. 916). Explanations are also
much more nuanced when it comes to accelerated erosion in Europe,
with deeper analyses involving the impact of social and technolog-
ical change, pressures on peasants, the effects of urbanization, and a
description of shifting property relations, among other social processes
(pp. 905-911). There is even praise for fascists in Italy (the term fas-
cism never even appears) "recreating the agricultural productivity of
classical times" (p. 904). For places like the U.S. and Australia, mul-
tiple genocides and slavery do not even merit the slightest allusion.
For Bennett, in such places of "white settlement, . . . nations developed
unhampered by indigenous population" (p. 922). As for previous
soil -destructive impacts by colonizers, they can be explained away
as mistakes due to the rapidity of "economic progress" or "develop-
ment" (p. 922), such as the above-mentioned pressure of "commercial
exploitation" (p. 919), out of which now more enlightened author-
ities are learning and for which they were developing conservation
measures.

Populationism has remained to the present almost as a default
research assumption. Among others, Eckholm (1976, 18) and Brown

Capitalism- Friendly Explanations

105

n j Wolf (1984, 5-6, 12) see pressure on farmers to use land badly
^cause of population growth and consequently rising crop demand.
pj m entel ( 1993, 2006) similarly uses the lopsided distribution of mal-
nutrition and recurring famines as proof of the seriousness of soil
jegradation and presumes population growth as main culprit (see also
ggegne 1982, 9; Hillel 1991, 17). The connection between mouths
to teed, food, and soil may seems obvious until one thinks about
the diversity of environmental factors (not just soils) affecting crop
growth, the widely differing requirements of crops and cropping sys-
tems, and the forms of social relations that lead to highly uneven
food distribution and consumption. Pimentel in particular might wish
to reconcile his notions with what he has recently theorized with
another author, which is the postulate that population growth is
driven by food availability (Hopfenberg and Pimentel 2001). Leav-
ing aside the absurdity 7 of this more recent argument, where varying
levels of food production just happen and political struggles do not
exist, 2 if food production is supposed to decline because of soil ero-
sion, as assumed by Pimentel, it is most remarkable how soil erosion
has made no difference on population growth, which continues, and
(bv PimentePs same faulty logical inference) on food production.
In the same volume edited by Pimentel, Khoshoo and Tejwani (1993,
121) even go so far as to claim that the land mismanagement they
identify as causing widespread soil erosion in India is the conse-
quence of population and livestock growth, despite initially tracing
the problem to colonial history. These attitudes are striking, consid-
ering other contributions to the volume, like that of Hurni (1993)
or Edwards (1993, 153-154), who refer to historical social pro-
cesses and find a rather different justification for their soil erosion
concerns.

Lang ( 1994 ), in an opening article to the proceedings of an interna-
tional congress on sustainable agriculture, begins by displaying figures
on world population growth. Lai (1994), rehashing earlier writing
(Lai, Hall, and Miller 1989 ) and trying to legitimate his view of soils
as production treadmills, follows suit with data on the ever declining
global trends in arable land per capita, an oft repeated approach to soils
figures (e.g., Khoshoo and Tejwani 1993, 120; Markewitz and Richter
2001, 11) that are in many cases unreliable (Bruinsma 2009, 238).
Lai, Hall, and Miller ( 1989) w ere nevertheless correct in their predic-
tion of decreasing per capita arable area over time. It is 0.2 hectare
per person, according to the most recently available FAOSTAT esti-
mates from 2011. But such averages are deceptive, even if estimates
were accurate, given that the FAO category of "arable land" excludes
permanently cultivated and pasture areas and especially given the

106

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

extreme worldwide inequality in land holdings, food distribution, aoj
decision -making processes over what is grown where, ail factors in ex ,
plicable by population growth. Abrol and Sehgal (1994, 129) restate
the equation for the Indian context with the well-meaning intent of
protecting soils to produce more food and "alleviate rural poverty"
(it is unclear how these processes are linked). But Lang dares go f^.
ther. In his view, population growth determines all other processes
in society and the "future of the world" is tied to how population
growth relates to energy consumption and environmental protection
It is a mystery how environmental protection, a consummately politi-
cal process, is independent of population growth in one sentence and
is then determined by population growth in the following sentence.
Leaving logic aside, there is also an interesting occurrence of self-
restraint in the populationist model, and that restraint enters its full
force when the author writes about his own country. When it comes
to discussing agriculture in Hungary, after the obligatory praising of
free -market democracy typical of the 1990s, the author's populationist
view rapidly fades away. It would, after all, be absurd to insist on
demographic determinism in the case of a country experiencing net
population decline. Yet even within the same volume, data and discus-
sions directly contradict such populationism. In the case of "Africa"
(i.e., tropical parts of the continent), Izac (1994, 82) finds that farm-
ers' adoption of sustainable practices is shown to depend on incentives
that are not necessarily connected to capitalist dynamics (i.e., "yield
stability" rather than cash-crop revenue).

The obdurate populationist will still claim that the recent spread
of more destructive land use is "due largely to increasing population
pressure" (Ellis and Mellor 1995, 223-224), an argument denying
huge consumption level chasms and associated environmental impacts.
At times, population pressure is represented as a special attribute
of non-Europeans. In a report to the German government, Steiner
(1996, 28) places demographic growth, a "well-known problem in
most developing countries," as the central cause inducing contrac-
tion of available land, leading to greater intensification and the spread
of farming in less suitable places. Only with adequate market access
can disaster be avoided, as the oft-cited example of Machakos District
(Kenya) supposedly teaches us (see also Wild 2003, 1-2, 151). The
author, unperturbed by self-contradiction, cannot fathom the well-
known soil-degrading processes of forced displacement and economic
deprivation, especially in "most developing countries," or of lucre in
places like Germany. This implicit argument that non-Europeans are
prone to self-inflicted soil degradation through a lack of population

Capitalism -Friendly Explanations

107

control is diffuse. Describing human impact in the Peten Maya region,
Beach postulates that "population growth has led to increased log-
ging, ranching, fuelwood gathering, and more extensive and shorter
fallow milpa agriculture" (Beach 1998, 380 ). s Such argumentative
simplicity seems attractive enough to Montgomery, who reprimands
t he same landless Mayan peasants for having "turned much of the
region's forests into. . . milpas." In his view, a "twentyfold increase in
population from 1964 to 1997 has transformed the region from nearly
unbroken forest to a nearly deforested landscape" (Montgomery
2007a, 76 ). Such claims can be dismissed on their own merits, accord-
ing to the evidence presented. Namely, population growth does not
correspond to the spread of milpas (evidence points to a two-decade
lag). Furthermore, a thousand years of continuous Maya presence has
not led to deforestation or population growth until more recently,
which should be an impetus for investigating causes other than those
hastily considered.

Similarly, Drechsel et al. (2001 ) assert that soil nutrient depletion
in Sub-Saharan Africa is due to rising population levels. Responding
to critical scholarship (e.g., Scoones and Toulmin 1998), they con-
clude (exceptionally for soil science discourse) that policies should be
primarily aimed at reducing fertility- rates. They seem remiss of the mis-
match between soil nutrient and rural population density data 4 and by
the reliability problems of simulations, where variation in soil charac-
teristics (e.g., clay mineralogy) are poorly addressed and processes like
pH and CEC (highly influential of nutrient availability- to plants) are
not even considered in the model (Stoorvogel and Smaling 1990).
Nutrient depletion, furthermore, does not reveal the amount of total
and potentially available nutrients, so it is misleading to evaluate the
impact of net nutrient extraction relative to cropping svstem (see also
Scoones 2001, 10-11). These issues alone make the conclusions at
the very least premature, but even more troubling is the authors' pre-
sumption that farmers "invest" in soils when market conditions are
favorable and their dismissal of tackling the conditions under which
farmers operate because they are "difficult to change" (Drechsel et al.
2001, 257). Capitulation to capital is presented as a matter of practical
solutions.

For many at the FAO, it is treated as a given that population den-
sity is "a factor influencing land degradation" (Bot, Nachtergaele,
and Young 2000, 33). Plotting the degree of soil degradation sever-
ity against regional population density figures, the authors happily
find what they knew all along. As population density increases, so
does the severity of soil degradation. It matters little that GLASOD,

108

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

the soil degradation assessment used, is faulty if not inaccurate
and that the spatial resolution of instances of soil degradation i s
much too coarse to test this assumed linkage (Chapter 4). But the
matter becomes even more fascinating when the authors exclude
"Europe" from analysis "because its high population densities are
mainly associated with urbanization" (ibid.), which is apparently a rare
phenomenon elsewhere, like the large Tokyo-Yokohama or Kolkhata-
Hooghly metropolitan areas. The contortions circus intensifies when
they admit that Asia and Pacific regions also do not fit the expected
pattern. Where there is higher population density, there is less degra-
dation. Severity- of degradation is matched with lower population
density, as in Europe and North America. Yet the exceptionality of
Asia and Pacific regions is not enough for special treatment, unlike
Europe. Perhaps if Europe were to be included, one would have to
confront the huge disparities in regional resource consumption lev-
els, rather than mere population densities. What is more, according
to the GLASOD data there are no areas of very severe degradation
in North America. In a sleight of cartographical hand, thousands
of extreme cases of pollution, like Toms River, New Jersey (US),
magically disappear. Nevertheless, given that there is no straightfor-
ward relationship between population density and soil degradation,
the authors are forced to admit that "population density may be
treated partly as a cause, but also to some degree as a consequence, of
severity of degradation" (p. 34). Not content, they resort to describ-
ing known country studies, carefully avoiding "Western" places (e.g.,
Bosnia Herzegovina, but not Norway for highland regions). These
case studies show the same equivocal results and force them to intro-
duce other processes, like income inequalities, but not confront their
own Eurocentric chauvinism.

Populationist arguments for Europe tend to be directed at the
remote non-capitalist past, such as for the UK, where, "In general,
erosion has been greatest at times of population pressure on the land
such as in Romano- British and Medieval times" (Boardman 2013,
420), a perplexing conclusions when considering the currently much
higher population levels in the same already eroded areas and the
much greater land use intensity, by way of, among other means,
agrochemicals and machinery. 5 But it is not always true that Europe
is exempted from populationist explanations. Van Lynden (1995,
13), using GLASOD data, explains the problem as due the indus-
trial revolution intensifying population pressure in "Europe" (i.e., the
European Union of the early 1990s). Aside from a lack of any chrono-
logical analysis relating changes in population size to impacts on soils,

Capitalism - Friendly Explanations

109

total population growth in the European Union is low when com-
pared to other areas of the world yet the degree of soil degradation
is relatively high. Country-specific studies also dispel any direct link
between population levels and the occurrence of soil degradation.
In Germany, Hungary, and Poland, for instance, there are areas of
soil degradation in a context of net population decline, in contrast
to Ireland, France, and Spain, with relatively high population growth
rates and yet no appreciably greater extent of soil degradation. Or,
if one prefers greater specificity, soil sealing is not coextensive with
population size or density, as shown even by data from institutional
organs, like the European Environmental Agency. 6 In a historical
period when overall population growth in the European Union is
largely immigration-led, 7 to claim population pressure as a principal
cause of soil degradation raises suspicions about the political aims of
the authors, particularly in the face of contradictory evidence.

Populationism is an art in blaming victims and choking intellectual
exploration. As Stocking (2003, 1357) notes, "Doomsday scenarios
of increasing population and declining soil resource quality fail to
capture the diversity 7 of soils, while presenting the worst-case out-
liers as the typical situation." It is debatable whether outliers even
prove a wholly demographic cause, as multiple factors are typically
involved, but the paucity of population control advocacy in soil science
is notable. Populationism is then possibly a strategy to attract attention
to the importance of soil conservation and thereby of soil scientists.
Or, it is strange that soil scientists should have trouble understand-
ing that high crop production and people being fed or urban area
enlargement and people being housed are emphatically not coexten-
sive processes in free-market democracies. Not so to populationists
like Pimentel, who have found their god Malthus in soil erosion. Soil
formation is geologically slow and human-induced erosion is quick
as lightening. Geometric soil production thereby meets exponential
soil destruction in a theatrical play as plausible as overnight global
glaciation.

Disconcertingly, leftists at times resort to populationist arguments,
too. Foster (1994, 23-24) recycles the institutional view that pits
demographic expansion against total arable land. Moore partly suc-
cumbs, like Chew (2005), to the assumption of a direct relationship
between demographic expansion and resource consumption. Hence,
deforestation in the sixteenth century is imputed to a combination
of population growth and a rise in cereal exports resulting from
increasing dependence on a Dutch-dominated international economy
(Moore 2012, 85). However, given the dearth of records on peasant

110

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

activities and demographics, it could be just as easily assumed that
deforestation w as wholly linked to external pressures and coerciv
measures from landlords.

The Soil Mismanagement Thesis

A similar logic is deployed about soil use and it is often explicitly
linked to demographics. Given exponential population growth and
diminishing amount of soil area available, the question becomes how
to manage soils so that everyone can be fed. Enter, therefore, the
valiant soil scientist telling soil managers how to improve their ways
As experts know their subject matter well, it would seem obvious that
their counsel should be authoritative on topics within the remit of
their expertise. But management is a social process requiring much
more than soil science expertise. Furthermore, socially uninformed
interventions have often failed in part by presuming locals have little
understanding or relations of power do not matter (Brookfield 2001*
Reij, Scoones, and Toulmin 1996). Such interventions can leave a
particularly bad taste of patriarchal and supremacist arrogance, as in
East Africa, where farming mainly involves women (Gladwin 2012
Rocheleau, Thomas-Slayter, and Wangari 1996). Undeterred, many
still have no qualms about dispensing explanations and prescriptions
without minding social processes or research.

Because it affects the largest amount of land area, agriculture is
often fingered as the major cause of soil degradation and a popular
target of intervention. Lai (1990, 10), for one, is in no doubt and
fully concurs with Bennett (1939, 12): "Soil erosion began with the
dawn of agriculture, when people began using the land for settled and
intensive agriculture." Not a few soil scientists find this a plausible
explanation, even if they might nuance it (e.g., Blum 1998a, 4). 8 The
task then is to study and diffuse soil-conserving techniques to improve
management, but, to add to Brookfield's observation (2001, 157), it
is astonishing how it is that soils have not completely vanished after
thousands of years of farming mismanagement, as many would like
us to believe (Khoshoo and Tejwani 1993, 118-120; Montgomery
2007a).

There must be more to human impact than agriculture, then.
We have some hints from other authors about this. From within an
international institution context (the FAO), the emphasis tends to
be on land use. Soil degradation occurrences are therefore also due
to deforestation, overgrazing, overharvesting, and industrial pollu-
tion (Bot, Nachtergaele, and Young 2000, 31-32; Braimoh and Vlek

Capitalism-Friendly Explanations

111

2007; Fullen and Catt 2004; Oldeman, Hakkeling, and Sombroek
1990). However, when it comes to explaining land use, a rare treat,
scientists come up with bizarre statements, such as agricultural intensi-
fication in temperate areas resulting from growing season brevity ( Ellis
a nd Mcllor 1995, 222). A glance at historical evidence, exhibiting
many instances of intensification in the tropics and a lack of intensive
systems in many temperate regions, quickly dispels such a view.

Blum (1998b) draws attention to urbanization and its associ-
ated spread of soil sealing of, among others, farmland (suddenly
redeemed! ), and the diffusion of forms of agriculture where they
Jo not belong (presumably industrialized forms, given references to
agrochemicals use and the like). He has a general theory that sees
soil degradation as caused by the gradual worldwide transfer of cer-
tain disruptive land use techniques (and associated biota) largely from
north to south, and the development and spread of industrial activi-
ties. The intensification of land use related to this twin transfer of land
use techniques and industrialization is, to return to a broken record,
due to population growth (populationism can also be thought as an
elementary confusion of putative correlation with causation). Regard-
less, soil scientists recognize that more than farming is involved in
soil degradation, but many seem to think that the causes have been
long in hatching out to their full potential (it took exponential popu-
lation growth to make the problem obvious). This argument for the
ancient origins of soil degradation is one way soil scientists contribute
to deflecting attention away from the specifically capitalism-induced
and unprecedented nature of the problem. Yet every soil scientist who
actually probes into the matter finds that soil degradation is mainly a
product of the recent past (Boardman 2003; Richter and Markewitz
2001 ). Unfortunately even the recognition ol different social systems
is rare, except perhaps the notion of "civilizations" ( Hillel 1991, 2008;
Montgomery 2007a), or the idea of "developed" and "undeveloped"
(Boardman, Poesen, and Evans 2003). Reference to a generic human-
ity or non-descript societies is most excellent reasoning for those
wishing to avoid political discomfort.

Lai et al. (2004, 11-13) delve a little more into the "socioeco-
nomic and political causes," by which they mean a list of things
like "population density," "land tenure," "policy," "market," "polit-
ical instability," and even "gender/ethnic equity." These are neither
defined nor taken up in any analvsis in the rest of the volume, where
the effects of US government policies, allusions to growing environ-
mental concerns and "market forces" (41) are discussed to explain
land use change. These causes are on a par with "biophysical causes"

112 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

(which strangely do not appear on the explanatory flowchart), ljj^
deforestation, tillage methods, and mining. In other words, soil degr a .
dation is caused by land use ("biophysical causes") and disconnected
timeless socioeconomic and political things. The analytical depth and
breadth is breath-taking. Such statements or explanations are some-
times accompanied by descriptions of what are to be regarded as
appropriate management practices or strategies to attenuate or combat
soil degradation (Blum 1998a, 12-13; Lai 1990, 309-317). In them-
selves, such recommendations can be useful, especially if they have
something new to offer to those actually using soils. However, they
are typically remiss of three crucial processes: (1) existing knowl-
edge production systems and practices outside institutional science,
(2) external pressures on soil users, and (3) changes in environmental
conditions induced from activities elsewhere.

Before identifying problems and offering remedies, soil scientists
ought to find out what people already do and that have enabled
them to live off the land across generations (for some more promis-
ing institutional alternatives, see Tengberg and Batta Torheim 2007).
Regrettably, prolific and influential scientists like Lai tend to be explicit
that, at least in tropical areas, it is "traditional agricultural systems*
(Lai 1990, 316) that must be improved and along the lines of what
they suggest, if, for instance, soil erosion is to be reduced effectively.
It is a marvel to read what is on offer as "scientific crop manage-
ment" (Lai 1990, 347), given how most of the examples described
are from field experiments, not from actual farming communities, and
how many recommended practices are common to "traditional agri-
cultural systems." It takes some arrogance to presume that farmers
do not know how to select crops suited to local conditions or "that
can establish a quick ground cover" (Lai 1990, 327), or that they do
not know the advantages of manual weeding (339). Then again, it
is doubtful that agriculturalists read such recipe books, which seem
aimed more at a technocratic audience.

One example of scientific intransigence itself hindering the iden-
tification of causes is how "traditional" techniques like polyculture
are treated. Lai (1990, 317) makes the startling discovery that poly-
cultural techniques are superior to monocultural ones in restraining
erosion and appropriates them as part of the panoply of conservation
interventions. This is in spite of widespread knowledge that polycul-
tural methods have been widely practiced in many communities living
in the tropics. Not only does polyculture help reduce erosion, but also
improve nutrient cycling efficiency, and mitigate weed and pathogen
effects (Altieri and Hecht 1990; Brookfield 2001; Igbozurike 1978;

Capitalism-Friendly Explanations

113

u t . Pleasant and Burt 2010; Picasso et al. 2008). Were Lai and oth-
ers really to abide by their own research results, they might explicitly
advocate for policies favoring polycultural techniques, so as to reduce
soil degradation. The fact that they do not suggests greater concern
for profitable productivity over soil degradation. Notably, polycul-
tural methods are being subjected to productivity tests (Griffith et al.
701 1 ) for use in commercial biorefineries (biomass energy and chem-
icals extraction factories) and are being found wanting for reasons of
"economics" (i.e., lower productivity 7 than monocultures).

Another process elided by technical or scientific experts is the set
0 f pressures from multiple sources that combine to hamper the devel-
opment or the continuation of beneficial impacts or constructive soil
use ( Blaikie 1985). So, it is certainly a legitimate observation that soil
degradation is courted by using land in ways that contradict capabil-
ity^ Khoshoo and Tejwani 1993, 119; Lai 1990, 309). The questions
should then be how the criteria for defining capability- are determined
(Chapter 3) and why people are using land in an inappropriate way
relative to soil properties, rather than presume that only technically
qualified outsiders have the requisite answers.

A third process that tends to be eschewed is the changing environ-
mental conditions linked to human impacts from far away or nearby.
Mulitza et al. (2010) have recently shown that the nineteenth century
colonial imposition of capitalist farming in the Northwest portion of
the Sahel is associated with rising levels of dust generation and marine
sedimentation, which implies greater erosion rates. This trend was
amplified during the 1970s by prolonged drought. Another example
of enduring effects of past impacts is the depletion of water supplies
and soil aridification and/or salinization due to upstream damming tor
the generation of electricity or irrigation systems favouring a minor-
it}- of (largely white) commercial farmers or other businesses. This
describes what occurred, for instance, in Baja California (Mexico) as
a result of damming the Colorado River (US), or in soils near the
Aral Sea and the Amu and Syr Darja floodplains with the irrigation
systems for largely market export-oriented cotton production during
and following the Soviet period. Finally, global warming effects make
for differential impacts on soils (Lai 2007). All these examples point
to a combination of processes of environmental change that have little
to do with local management practices.

The solutions proffered by such experts tend to be similarly bliss-
ful of context. For instance, LaPs (1990) land use recommendations
involve an inventory of soils, climate characteristic, and "socioeco-
nomic factors" (basically, the extent of mechanization and types of

114

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

tools available). Blum (1998a, 11-13) would add to this more sta te
intervention based on precautionary principles and greater interna,
tional and national coordination and cooperation in studying the
problem. What all these strategies have in common is the expli c j t
push for scientific knowledge transfer and the establishment of inc en .
tives for soil users to adopt scientific recommendations. This not only
ignores social relations that shape land use, but runs roughshod over
people's own classifications about which soils can be used for what
purpose and it imposes the sort of technical needs (lab facilities
reagents, coring equipment, etc.) that disqualify most communities
from being able to carry out their own inventories (cf. Bradley 1983)
Then again, the objective is not really feeding people, but reach-
ing "high and sustained production" (Lai 1990, 320), instead of
"maximum yield in bad years" (Blaikie 1985, 22 ).

Pointing to mismanagement by soil users is hardly new. However
the subject and the explanations given have varied and exceptional'
analyses have emerged. Prior to the 1930s in the US, for instance, the
matter of soil management was viewed in terms of insufficient under-
standing of soils to "win success in agriculture in the production of
food and clothing" (Whitney 1925, 14) or a matter of soil fertility for
part of the urban business sector (Shulman 1999). The problem" was
the incompetence of the soil user, but rather than degradation, the
focus of attention was under-production or production failures result-
ing from lack of knowledge, which was to be imparted by scientists
and technicians (extension agents) or urban-based business interests
in their intrepid struggle against social inertia. It is not that there
was no soil degradation, but it was not yet recognized politically as
a problem. As well known, the turn came about in the 1930s, with
the subject shirting to a preoccupation with erosion. However, the
causes of degradation were regarded as social, the result of combined
institutional incentives, contradictions between profitable production
and soil characteristics, financial pressures, and price-revenue linkages.
The technocratic solution offered was imbued with paternalism and
nationalism but multi-dimensional, from farmer education to price
stabilization and government support. The policies resulting from
USDA recommendations may have eventuated in markedlv containing
the erosion problem (Lai et al. 2004; Zobeck and Schillinger 2010),
but failed relative to other forms of soil degradation, such as pol-
lution, sealing, and acidification, and certainly succeeded in further
removing people from farming altogether (Goodman and Redclift
1989) and reinforcing the dominance of settler colonial farming as an
enterprise largely centered about white heterosexual maleness (Sachs

Capitalism -Friendly Explanations

115

1996). Furthermore, these past policies contrast with the treatment
an d constructs of food producers elsewhere or of peoples under the
voke of US colonialism (e.g., Correia 2013; Leach and Mearns 1996;
Prucha 1984).

Unexceptional Exceptions and Prospects for
Internal Dissent

In a footnote for the first section dedicated to machinery and its rela-
tionship to the relative exploitation of workers, Karl Marx had this to
say about the natural scientists of his day:

The weak points in the abstract materialism of natural science, a materialism
that excludes history and its process, are at once evident from the abstract and
ideological conceptions of its spokesmen, whenever they venture beyond the
bounds of their own specialty.

(Marx 1867/1992, 352, fn. 2)

Modern self-appointed overpopulation and mismanagement theoreti-
cians seem to exhibit such weak points all too well, but there is
much more ferment within, even if largely misdirected as a result of
woefully deficient political analysis (or of often unstated capitalist con-
victions). That is to say, there is some dissatisfaction with technocratic
approaches that compels excursions into social causes, even if spo-
radic and limited in scope. These explorations into the social context
of soil managers are typically carried out in industrialized countries,
but there are important examples of more critical understandings of
"developing" country contexts, as cited above (Hurni 1993; Izac
1994). Disappointingly, prospects for critical self-reflection through
soil science history are stifled by self-encomiastic narratives of progress
and heroism or sanitized descriptions of scientific practices passivelv
responding to societal demands, a mystification of state and/or cap-
italist pressures on scientists as workers (cf. Bouma and Hartemink
2002, 136; Krupenikov 1981; Mausbach and Barker 2001; Warkentin
2006; Yaalon and Berkowicz 1997).

Overall, to my knowledge, Fred Magdoff is the only openly left-
ist soil scientist, especially evident in his writings for the socialist
periodical Monthly Review. He, alongside agroecologists (e.g., Altieri
2009; Altieri and Hecht 1990), has also contributed to developing
alternative holistic ways that challenge capitalist farming (Magdoff
2007; Magdoff and van Es 2000). However, the approach only
targets its current technological basis, not the capitalist mode of

116

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

production per se (e.g., sustainable practices are discussed in tern^
of farmer profitability). To address the latter, Magdoff's prolific writ,
ing has concentrated on farming, populationism, land politics, socialist
futures, among other topics, 9 without developing an alternative soil
degradation theory.

On the other hand, ethnopedological work challenges at least the
mismanagement thesis by demonstrating local comprehension of soils
and often more managerial competence than that of outsider tech-
nocrats (Brookfield 2001; Norton, Sandor, and White 2003;
Scoones, and Toulmin 1996; Richards 1985; Zimmerer 1994). It is a
laudable effort to bring legitimacy to knowledge systems of oppressed
communities. As part of this overall aim, "ethnopedology helps val-
idate scientific soil knowledge to assure that it is not only scientific
but also locally relevant and functional" (Barrera-Bassols, Zinck, and
Van Ranst 2006, 133). A main weakness is that soil scientists are
assumed to have no ethnicity and the bridging between knowledge
systems is remiss on power relations that can transform such bridg-
ing into another strategy of repression (e.g., using local knowledge
to improve soil survey precision to benefit land speculators and dis-
possess locals). In other words, even while undermining technocratic
approaches, ethnopedology suffers from a lack of critical self- appraisal
and social relations analysis (see also Seth 2009, 379-380).

Otherwise, dissent is expressed largely as dissatisfaction with poli-
cies, even neoliberal ones. There is a tendency to promote smallholder
private property in land. Sometimes, as in ethnopedology, efforts are
made to legitimate knowledge systems outside those sanctioned by
the state, but such efforts typically skip industrialized settings. Rarely,
histories of colonialism or even slavery systems are acknowledged, but
the matter is understood as a past of little bearing to current land use
systems. Seemingly anti-colonial or otherwise critical perspectives also
poorly conceal nationalist or small land-owner agendas.

Those taking issue with government policies or economic incen-
tives, such as the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy,
see farm management as only an immediate cause. "Socio-economic
drivers," like government policies and "simple economic reality" like
"short-term economic returns," are the ultimate causes (Boardman
2013, 423). In this, current soil scientists might be discovering past
formulations, with causation divided according to micro- (farm level)
and macro-social (national and international) factors and solutions
found in nationalist (or now European Union) strategies of state
intervention to maintain agribusiness competitiveness while conserv-
ing soils in one region (Bennett 1939; Hambidge 1938; Timmons

Capitalism - Friendly Explanations

117

1979, 55-60). The extent to which the capitalist mode of production
i s taken for granted is breath-taking, as are the explanatory inconsis-
tc ncy and the inability to carry the analysis further by some simple
questions. These could be what constitutes an economic return and
N vhv short-term gain is prioritized. Arguably, one could find the rea-
son for this analytical complacency in an unwillingness to confront
existing power relations. For when it comes to more powerful com-
mercial farmers, responsibility for soil degradation shifts from soil
manager to policy-maker and the problem shifts from mismanagement
or overpopulation to "simple economic reality" or "political will"
(Arden-Clarke and Evans 1993, 215). The main concern, particularly
j n the European Union, is harmonizing soil conservation policies with
killers' economic requirements, and, to the scientists' consistent cha-
grin, witnessing mostly a mismatch (Boardman, Poesen, and Evans
2003; Bouma and Droogers 2007).

The tendency for blaming food-producing people outside "devel-
oped" countries (or in the non-capitalist past) for using soils improp-
erly or for having too many children and the curious deference for
what are presumably mostly white male farm business owners, whose
collective political influence likely out-matches that of soil scientists,
points to a classist, masculinist, and racist tendency. However, in
spite of soil scientists, soils research can be very useful towards a
general critique of capitalist relations. The above-cited Lai offers use-
ful information to critique capitalist (and state-socialist) approaches
and environmental practices, like monoculture farming. Even more
interesting are recent findings for countries like France and the UK
that are indicative of the repercussions of neoliberal policies on soil
erosion rates. These have markedly risen over the past 50-60 years
because of the intensification of farming (e.g., machinery-induced
compaction), the expansion of cropping into periods of high rainfall
erosivity, and the eradication of parcel boundaries (e.g., hedge rows)
that mitigated the transfer of eroded material. It is soil scientists them-
selves, not leftists, who point the finger at land consolidation as part
of the cause (Arden-Clarke and Evans 1993; Boardman 2003; Chartin
etal. 2013 ). The connection between the concentration of capital and
soil erosion is thereby laid bare, but no leftist analysis is ready to catch
the opportunity. Such contributions set important precedents and
provide promising counterbalances to a morass of capitalism-friendly
explanations.

Some researchers attempt to explain the occurrence of mismanage-
ment itself. In part, the effort is to make findings useful to the
formulation of government and international policies, especially in

118

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

light of concerns expressed over soil degradation in Agenda 21
promoted by the United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development (UNCED) at the 1992 Summit in Rio de Janeiro (d c
Haas and Friedrichsen 1996, i). This type of work is also related to an
acknowledgement of policy failures in soil conservation in many parts
of the world and the subsequent attention to rethink development
projects in ways that are not detrimental to soils. It is an important step
forward in that there is recognition that mismanagement is the result
of social arrangements, rather than a cause in itself. But what usually
ends up being highlighted is a list of factors that are treated as if they
were independent of each other or assumed as causal without support-
ing evidence. For instance, the above-cited Steiner (1996), in spite
of his obsession with population growth and his double -standards,
finds other factors also affect soil use, like displacement of pastoralists.
More recent approaches to land use are more nuanced in that they
consider the complexity involved in relating highly variable social and
ecological circumstances across the world. Soil degradation, in this
view, remains linked to populationist explanation, but in the context
of social changes due to "globalization" and shifts in policies. Rec-
ommendations, however, stress a need for improving world market
conditions for "developing countries," especially smallholding farmers
(Braimoh and Vlek 2007, 3).

Any promising dissatisfaction with the status quo tends to be
channeled into priorities unsuited to developing critiques of power
relations. Some of this can be sensed in technical debates over soil
quality criteria, as described in Chapter 3. Justified concern over soil
degradation is reduced to the development of a scorecard with a
narrow set of characteristics conforming to requirements of white
male -dominated capitalist farming in industrialized countries in mostly
temperate zones. Much of the resistance to the institutionalization
of soil quality scorecards is voiced by those acting as possibly unwit-
ting representatives of commercial farmers that view with suspicion
any fetters on how they dispose of their property. Davis and Miller
(1997) observe that capitalism in formerly state -socialist countries like
Poland has brought such a degree of economic insecurity as to ham-
per farmers' sustainable soil use. This generic smallholding farmer
understanding is similar to that of Montgomery (2007a, 244), a
self-confessed champion of private ownership by those working the
farm (the "small farmer"). To him "Private ownership is essential"
and small farmers everywhere should be market-oriented to some
degree (Montgomery 2008). Hence, the problem of soil degrada-
tion would be greatly diminished if subsidies went to small organic

Capitalism-Friendly Explanations

119

growers, absentee ownership disappeared, agribusiness adopted no-till
methods, and urban farming prospered (but see Engel-Di Mauro
2012b).

Commendably, Montgomery (2007a, 163-164, 230-232, 235)
ventures much further than most soil scientists in a comparative anal-
ysis of social systems. He argues that soil erosion is a problem of both
capitalist and "socialist" (i.e., Soviet) agriculture because resource
depletion is not recognized in those systems. Hence, his attention
turns to Cuba, an undeniably successful example of government-
mandated applied agroecology. This is in spite of being, according
to the author, "a dictatorship isolated from global market forces" and
*a one-party police state." In tact, by the author's own admission,
Cubans were better fed than the rest of Central America and the
Caribbean (and many in the US), even before the early 1990s food
crisis. But since evidence must fit the author's private property ideol-
ogy, he asserts that the establishment of "semi-organic farming" on
the island was the outcome of economic pressures that forced agricul-
tural reforms enabling more private farming, thereby "retreating from
the socialist agenda" (p. 232). The author prefers the fanciful notion
that Cuba has not been trading with many countries outside the Soviet
bloc since 1959 and that, apparently, decades of US embargo enforc-
ing isolation from most global trade managed to put no pressure on
Cuban food production. Cuba is "socialist" when it suits the author
and then it is "retreating from the socialist agenda" when "social-
ism" may put a dent in the author's private ownership ideology. It is
unfortunate that such promising analysis should so easily succumb
to pastiche politics, like those prevailing in Green parties and move-
ments, haughtily pretending to rise beyond and above left and right.
To achieve such heights and transcendence, the typical maneuver is
to subsume all socialist history and movements under the USSR (are
Greens unknowing parrots of the Third International? ) so as to declare
them all as environmentally devastating or potentially so, just like big
business ( cf, Armstrong 2008; Schmidt et al. 2011).

For most of these authors, the issue is primarily one of enshrin-
ing private property as a primary means for farmer control over land,
who either needs state -provided security' or support or rentiers (big
business) off their backs. Collective or communal ownership in many
farming communities worldwide simply cannot be conceded to exist.
Even so, how to reconcile multiple systems of land tenure or how
private land ownership even happens are themes rarely explored, but
when they are, much is revealed about the extent to which soil sci-
entists believe in bourgeois mythology. For instance, Ashman and

120

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

Puri (2002, 114) trace the origins of private property and even class
differentiation and industrialization to the "permanent settlement*
necessitated by farming. Sedentarism inevitably makes people think 0 f
land as their possession, which explains why so many transient work-
ers and highly mobile bosses are losing the sense of private property
(if only they stayed put, they would not be prone to communisrnt)
In some contrast, the less grandiose Bouma and Droogers (2007
455) are more openly wedded to a version of democracy whose
foundations are u the interaction between citizens and their society
and government," with scientists like them facilitating and mediating
such interaction on the basis of objective facts and, of course, private
property. Soil degradation can be reduced or avoided by this sort of
scientific involvement, as echoed by others (e.g., Boardman, Poesen
and Evans 2003 ), but this democratic approach seems only to apply t 0
mostly land-owning, market-oriented farmers in selected parts of the
world, where liberal democracy and thriving soils experts rule the land.

Aside from these more candid writings, work by soil scientists
sometimes wander, even if minimally, into wider political context and
even social history. These brief voyages outside one's intellectual terri-
tory are instructive about current prospects for any development of
heterodox views within soil science. Inchoate recognition that soil
degradation is linked to issues of resource control over resources
is often derailed by uncritical acceptance of capitalist tenets. For
instance, the above-cited Davis and Miller (1997, 4) posit that "free-
dom without security 7 is meaningless," an indictment of the unbridled
free -market ideology rampant in the policies imposed on many soci-
eties in Central and Eastern Europe since the early 1990s. Yet such
remarks are confined to promoting the economic security 7 of socially
non-descript smallholding farmers. It is a veritable rarity 7 to witness
any awareness about the social identities of soil managers. Richter and
Markewitz (2001, 3-7) and Lai et al. (2004) exhibit hints of sensi-
tivity 7 towards the gendered nature of soil use, for example, but this
is confined to a series of photographs in the former and a flowchart
entry in the latter, with no discussion on the subject.

Richter and Markewitz (2001, 11), contradicting managerialism
by advocating for greater "technical understanding of how man-
agement alters soils over time," 10 outline the history of soil use in
what is now the south-eastern US. They show that Native Americans
practiced sustainable soil use, compared to subsequent destructive
practices by "early pioneers" or "settlers" that pushed cropland from
the floodplains to the uplands, where low-CEC and low-pH (i.e., low
fertility;) soils abound (Ultisols, in USDA nomenclature). Such greater

Capitalism - Friendly Explanations

121

enS itivity to the effects of settler colonialism has counterparts in places
like Australia, where "inappropriate land uses" are traced squarely to
-settlement by Europeans" (Edwards 1993, 148, 153). This could be
user ul to decolonization struggles. The trouble is that authors from
se ttler colonial regimes, like the US and Australia, fail to mention the
2 enocide and mass forced displacements involved in what amounted
to successive military invasions. Besides their insensitive use of terms
jkg "settlement"), they treat Indigenous Peoples as homogenous
and historically static. They do not describe what happened to Indige-
nous Peoples and their past and/or current impacts on soils. Nor do
they show much interest in, for example, the rather different condi-
tions faced historically by oppressed peoples within those countries
relative to effects on land use. At least Richter and Markewitz (2001,
119) recognize that soil degradation in the southeastern US was asso-
ciated with a "rural economy based on slavery," though wrongly
assuming similar conditions for "white" and "black" family farms
(p. 126). In light of this, the theory expressed by agricultural engi-
neer Beasley decades ago remains unsurpassed within the technical
soils literature. Even if offensively caricaturing Native Americans as
"primitive" with "close ties" to the land, he acknowledged that Native
Americans were forced out and identified the problem as being that
"most white men . . . considered land as something to own for profit
making only." These processes along with inappropriate soil-exposing
cultivation techniques, copious (I would add militarily conquered)
arable land, and ever larger machinery are cited as the main con-
tributors to "the highest rate of destruction of the largest area of
productive soil in the history of man" (Beasley 1972, 6). However,
the solutions sought are caged in the bourgeois institutional context
the author inhabits. As other technocrats and bourgeois environmen-
talists, he resorts to using a generic first person plural as the subject
that must change so as to achieve environmental preservation. How
self-transformation is to be achieved is wrapped in mystery.

The above-discussed relative divergence from civilizationism (catas-
trophism), populationism, and managerialism demonstrates the
repeated failure by soil scientists to develop credible explanations of
soil degradation. This is because they do not seriously consider the
social relations that compel one or another kind of soil use and impact.
Pretending that soil degradation is a technical issue is mere fig leaf
for avoiding the crucial task of educating oneself in social theory
and the study of social processes. There continues to be a lack of
rigorous study of social dynamics commensurate with detailed soils
research. More specifically, by ignoring the relations of domination

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Ecology, Soils, and the Left

behind soil management differentials, soil scientists cannot explain dif
ferences relative to impacts on soils and accordingly tend to reinfo rcc
sometimes contradictory ideologies emanating from diverse sectors
of government and business. All this matters not only in explain
ing how soils change, but also in formulating alternatives to counter
practices that lead to soil degradation. Since social relations largely
determine management practices, it makes little sense to repackage old
technocratic approaches, whereby the culprit is already known (pop u .
lation growth, local mismanagement, bad policies) and soils data are
gathered and interpreted mostly to fulfil the rulers' requirements of
the day, masked behind bourgeois democracy and its national and
international institutions (the NRCS, the European Commission, the
FAO, the Global Environment Facility, etc.). Treating instances of
soil degradation and scales of action (e.g., local, national, global) as
discrete units, blaming the least empowered for causing soil degra-
dation, concentrating on the relative merits of government policy, or
obsessing over private ownership are ways soil scientists are complicit
in rendering the enormous soil-destroying hand of capital invisible.

Chapter 6

~$m?&

Leftist Alternatives
and Failures

Among the early movements struggling against what would
eventually be known as capitalism, the Diggers, a small group that
sprung up in late 1640s England, took issue with the imposition of pri-
vate property. They started to farm on common land in various areas
of the country in 1649, of which the commune in Cobham (ca. 60
km southw est of London) is best known. Harassed by local landlords
and the Cromwell dictatorship, they disbanded by the early 1650s,
but left an inspiring legacy. One of the more prominent figures of the
small movement, Jerrard Winstanley, was to write in a 1652 pamphlet
( u The Law of Freedom in a Platform"):

True Freedom lies where a man receives his nourishment and preservation,
and that is in the use of the Earth: For as Man is compounded of the four
Materials of the Creation, Fire, Water, Earth, and Ayr; so is he preserved by
the compounded bodies of these four, which are the fruits of the Earth, and
he cannot live without them.

(Jerrard Winstanley; in Sabine 1965, 519)

Soils formed a pivotal focus of insurrection. There was little doubt
that private property literally inflicts bodily harm (if not death), given
that farming was the mainstay of food procurement in seventeenth-
century England. Yet the Diggers' objectives were far from parochial.
They reckoned that

not only this Common [in George-Hill, Cobham, Surrey] . . . should be taken
in and Manured by the People, but all the Commons and waste Ground
in England, and in the whole World, shall be taken by the People in

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Ecology, Soils, and the Left

righteousness, not owning any Propriety [property]; but taking the Earth to
be a Common Treasury, as it was first made for all.

( Jerrard Winstanley 1649, "The True Levellers
Standard," in Sabine 1965, 260)

The centrality of soil to world revolution would be largely diluted, if
not removed in subsequent left anti-capitalist currents. In some \vay s
leftists mirrored the rest of capitalist society in their increasing remote-
ness from soils. However, Karl Marx focused on soils, not factories, in
postulating the simultaneously social and environmental degradation
brought about by capitalist production:

Capitalist production . . . develops technology, and the combining together of
various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of
all wealth — the soil and the labourer.

(Marx 1867, 475)

These are but a few examples of how soils have been appreciated as a
basis of struggle in leftist movements and writings. Soils retain political
importance in many parts of the world, wherever struggles over land
are associated with growing or gathering food, including in the most
industrialized of cities (Engel-Di Mauro 2012b; Heynen, Kurtz, and
Trauger 2012). It is then curious how this attention to soils has never
translated into any systematic effort to know what they are, how they
work, how changes in their characteristics interrelate with changes in
society. Those tasks have been left historically to biophysical scien-
tists, whose worldviews are often infused with now reigning capitalist
ideology, as discussed in the previous chapters.

This general lack of interest among leftists in explaining biophysical
processes is in sharp contrast to the enriching debates and intel-
lectual creativity- on the theme of environmental degradation, how
or whether it fits with leftist or critical ideas and movements,
whether or in what ways social theories and/or leftist projects
must shift their foundations, and whether or to what degree it is
used for authoritarian ends (e.g., Benton 1989; Bookchin 1971;
Forsyth 2008; Foster 1998; Harawav 1991; Harvey 1996; Hewitt
1983; Kovel 2002 Mies and Shiva 1993; Moore 2003; O'Connor
1988; Pepper 1993; Redclift and Benton 1994; Robbins 2004;
Robertson et al. 1996; Salleh 1997; Schwartzman 1996; Smith,
1990; Swyngedouw 1996; Watts 1983; Wisner 1978). The plethora
of writings and the range of topics are vast and the ideas debated
stimulating, promising, and enlightening. Reference herein to those
discussions is limited by my inability to account comprehensively for

Leftist Alternatives and Failures

125

sU ch voluminous literature, but also by the scope of this endeavor,
which in this chapter is to summarize the accomplishments of
leftists and critical scholars upon which the present work builds
a nd subsequently the identification of problems in leftist theorizing
traceable to a cursory or inadequate grasp of biophysical processes
like soils.

Critical and Leftist Contributions to Explaining
Soil Degradation

Critiques of mainstream narratives about soil degradation have largely
originated outside soil science, and they have even assisted in devel-
oping the framework for a broader perspective called political ecology.
Some of these critiques were incorporated into the overviews and anal-
yses provided in the previous chapters because they suited most closely
the objectives of overhauling soils research, but they will be briefly
revisited here to show continuity among the disparate works on the
subject, as well as its under- appreciated richness.

Initial works questioning the mainstream environmental crisis nar-
rative and highly populationist rhetoric came about by the late 1970s
and early 1980s, with, for example, the work of Swift (1977, 1996)
countering claims about desertification in the Sahel and of Beinart
(1984) on racism and soil conservation in South Africa. There were
also a few attempts within physical geography, as part of initiatives
within the Union of Socialist Geographers, to break down disci-
plinary barriers and offer socialist perspectives on topics overwhelmed
by technocratic approaches. One such work was by Bradley (1983 ),
who exposed the biases against peasant farming in scientific irriga-
tion research and soil surveys and outlined an alternative soil research
program that focuses on local soil classification and understandings.
Dahlberg and Blaikie (1999 ) have also shown the greater effective-
ness of data-gathering and soils interpretation that takes seriously and
compares multiple perspectives and priorities to arrive at conclusions
about the status of soils. I have marginally contributed to refining this
methodology by formulating and applying an approach that does not
assume community or household homogeneity, focusing on gender-
based difference (Engel-Di xMauro 1999, 2003). The community-
oriented methodological approach has gained institutional support
and has occasionally developed into guidelines broadened to a general
land assessment and suited especially for agrarian, peasant communi-
ties (Stocking and Murnashan 2000; Teneberg and Batta Torheim
2007).

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Ecology, Soils, and the Left

There was therefore much ferment prior to the pioneering study 0n
soil erosion and conservation by Piers Blaikie ( 1985). The importance
of that volume is in providing a systematic and critical overview on
the subject from explicitly leftist moorings. Drawing from contempo-
rary Marxist perspectives, including world- systems and dependency
theories, he concluded, among other things, that the very notion
of soil erosion is debatable not only on technical but also on politi-
cal grounds. Where soil erosion is a problem, conservation programs
often fail as a result of ignoring the fact that soil erosion is also a
question of social conditions. These are not confined to localities
where soil erosion is alleged to be occurring, but involve linkages to
worldwide political economic relations. He posits four ways of under-
standing soil erosion and conservation: (1) they emerge from social
structures; (2) technical approaches are ill equipped to address these
structures; (3) all conservation projects have ideological assumptions
about social change; and (4) ideas of social change must have priority
(Blaikie 1985, 149). Less appreciated is his development of a model of
soil erosion linking modes of production to soil erosion and broaden-
ing the analysis beyond peasant societies to include large mechanized
capitalist and state -socialist farming.

This germinal work was followed by a co-edited volume with
Harold Brookfield where the "regional political ecology" approach
was introduced, inspiring much work thereafter, some of it spin-
ning away from any actual research on biophysical processes and
certainly away from any concern with soils (Blaikie 1999; Walker
2005). The volume included an excellent piece by Michael Stocking,
whose critiques of soil erosion estimation were included in Chapter 4.
Other contributions included the linking of interactions and scale and
an alternative concept and formula of net degradation (Blaikie and
Brookfield 1987, 7, 14; Brookfield 2001, 174).

Other studies have since expanded on such political ecology frame-
works and, more recently, in environmental history. Zimmerer's
work in the Bolivian Andes demonstrates the influence of differing
perceptions and effects of shifts in social relations on soil erosion rates
and distribution (Zimmerer 1993, 1994). The inescapably social char-
acter of soil conservation has been forcefully demonstrated through
detailed historical studies. These point to the inefficacy of soil con-
servation based on racist policies, as with British colonial dictatorship
in Southern Africa (Beinart 1984; Delius and Schirmer 2000), but
also to the importance of local social conditions and struggles in the
outcomes of soil conservation policies even within the same general
imperial formation, such as in St. Vincent (Grossman 1997). Kate

Leftist Alternatives and Failures

127

powers, in continuity with Blaikie (1985), illustrates how soil ero-
sion in Lesotho is inexplicable without putting Basotho land use
change in the context of resistance to British-Dutch encroachment,
NV arrare, and dictatorship (Showers 2005, 16-19). The study by Bell
and Roberts (1991) of Dambo soil classification under and follow-
ing colonial dictatorship in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe demonstrates, by
example, a methodology for discerning the political processes behind
technocratic knowledge production (cf. Bradley 1983).

The above studies attest to the importance of context specificity to
explain soil degradation. Much research is dedicated to the racist and
colonizing aspects of soil degradation and of soil degradation theories.
Class-based analyses, regrettably, tend to be rare and probably because
of the focus on peasant and pastoralist systems under colonial situa-
tions or under scrutiny and on intervention from international insti-
tutions. There have been, however, studies demonstrating the linkages
between gender relations and soil use and degradation that would
be useful towards refining existing ecofeminist work, which, like
other leftist approaches, tends to overlook the analysis of biophysical
processes. Although sparse, these case studies indicate that gender
relations have implications for soil conditions and that, conversely,
changes in soil quality affect farming community members differ-
ently according to gender (e.g., Gladwin 2012; Kamar 2001; Kunze,
Waibel, and Runge-Metzger 1998; Oromo 1998; Reij, Scoones, and
Toulmin 1996; Rocheleau, Thomas- Slayter, and Wangari 1996). For
example, Carney's study in The Gambia attests to the importance of
understanding gender-specific practices and knowledge when analyz-
ing soil degradation. Rice irrigation has been traditionally women's
work, but government projects involved the transfer of pump irri-
gation technologies mainly to men, resulting in the activation of
acid-sulfate soils in some circumstance (Carney 1991). Leach and
Fairhead (1995) show that, in Northern Liberia, women's subsis-
tence production has promoted long-term soil fertility by raising soil
OM. Yet such practices are entangled in historically shirting gendered
resource control associated with increasing constraints on women.
These findings concur with the results of my previous research in
Hungary, where, though over a much more limited area, a local patri-
archal system is associated with gender-differentiated soil classification
and use and more sustainable practices among women (Engel-Di
Mauro 2003). Overall, these and other findings demonstrate the
importance of examining gender relations as part of a set of causal
factors determining soil quality change and the spatial distribution of
soil characteristics. Whether gender roles are enabling or constraining,

128 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

a linkage exists between gender relations and environmental p rac _
tices that affects or even induces soil quality change. The matter then
becomes one of understanding at what conjunctures multiple social
and biophysical processes give rise to soil degradation.

Many insights and innovative ways of explaining transformations of
soils and questioning mainstream theories of soil degradation origi-
nate in research carried out in African contexts. The edited collection
by Reij, Scoones, and Toulmin (1996) provides a wealth of examples
of indigenous African systems of soil and water conservation, but it
also demonstrates the fallacies of populationism and manage rialism
The former is contradicted by the intensification of conservation mea-
sures with higher population density. Managerialistic explanations can
likewise be rejected by pointing to the sheer existence and efficacy of
conservation techniques that are developed without technocratic, or
rather, often because of a lack of technocratic intervention. There is
no denial that conservation techniques and technologies have been
adopted by indigenous Africans, but coercion, lack of sensitivity to
internal differentiation within a local community, and adverse polit-
ical economic conditions tend to undermine conservation efforts.
Another edited collection (Scoones 2001 ) elaborates on the continu-
ing scientific misrepresentation of the status of soils in Africa through
survey- based data aggregation, experimental plots, and nutrient bal-
ance sheets. Such tendentious production of scientific knowledge that
ignores the spatial diversity and temporal dynamics of soils serves to
legitimate policy interventions that run roughshod over the social pro-
cesses behind soil degradation, if such a problem is not an artefact of
scientific constructs. A grasp of local agro-ecological and social con-
ditions is therefore necessary to assess changes in soils and possible
trajectories.

A more comprehensive view of soils tends to be rare, but an
impressive environmental history collection edited by McNeill and
Winiwarter (2006) contains numerous in-depth analyses of various
regions of the world, showing a great variety of soil uses and human
contributions to soil formation, such as on wetland soils through-
out the Americas. Given the state of the evidence, some of the work
is speculative. It is centered about soil erosion, with a few chapters
devoted to nutrient cycles. Showers (2006), in a commendably thor-
ough explication of the relationship be twe en African peoples and soils,
gives an appreciation of the immense history and variation of soils and
human shaping of them, all of which tends to be whitewashed in crisis
narratives to justify largely European colonial impositions in the past
and now international interventions that have often destroyed more

Leftist Alternatives and Failures

129

than conserved soils (cf. Leach and Mearns 1996). Among the studies
is also an evaluation of long-term effects of practices by Indigenous
j^pa Nui inhabitants and under the more recent European colo-
nial regime (Mieth and Bork 2006). The authors point to enduring
sheet erosion after deforestation followed, after colonial conquest, by
a shift towards more gully or linear erosion with sheep herding and the
final demise of endemic tree species. Overall, these studies implicitly
question catastrophist notions of soil degradation and populationist
explanations as well as provide evidence of often sharp contrasts in
the degree of soil erosion between periods preceding and succeed-
ing European colonialism and the eventual formation of national
states.

As the above variety in approaches attests, the answer to the ques-
tion of why human-induced soil degradation occurs must be found
at a deeper level, beyond population growth, technological systems,
property regimes and market quirks, and other such factors because
they are outcomes, not drivers of social relations and of people-
environment interactions. Soil degradation can be explained in many
ways, but it necessitates investigations focused on social processes,
from understanding causes of soil degradation to defining and clas-
sifying soils as degraded. Whenever such investigations are made,
populationist and managerialist arguments have been proven false.

Accomplishments and Limits of Leftist and Critical Work
on Soil Degradation

What is striking about both leftist and critical work on soil degrada-
tion is the overwhelming concentration on erosion and, to a lesser
degree, nutrient cycles (fertility), and a progressive, nearly total dis-
appearance of any outwardly leftist political commitment. Save for
occasional and generic remarks on OM and pH, there has been, to my
knowledge, virtually no attention to soil biology, chemical processes,
and many physical properties, like structure and hydraulic conductiv-
ity. Most studies have been largely reactive, addressing the biases in
established, institutional knowledge, but germinal alternative frame-
works have nonetheless been developed that can serve more proactive
objectives, even if not explicitly addressing egalitarian concerns.

With respect to social processes, the dearth of class analysis looms
large and so does the exiguous attention to international linkages
and processes that affect soil use (Engel-Di Mauro 2009, 2012a).
There has been a tendency to treat the occurrence of soil degrada-
tion as an isolated process, when actually occurring, and as part of an

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Ecology, Soils, and the Left

international process, when partially an artefact of official rendition
by governments or supra-national entities. Moreover, since Blaikie's
initial attempts, no general theory of soil degradation under capi-
talist conditions has been proposed, nor any systematic comparative
analysis.

Nevertheless, major strides have been made in reaching institutions
not just with respect to academic theorization. Some of the above-
described work, perhaps because adopting more politically innocuous
critical frameworks, has reached the academic mainstream and insti-
tutions like the World Bank, the FAO, and the Global Environment
Facility (Blaikie et al. 1995; Tengberg and Batta Torheim 2007). They
have even featured in relatively widely read periodicals like Science
(Stocking 2003) and National Geographic (Mann 2008, 96-100).
However, they have been either ignored or wildly distorted in soil sci-
ence. Oldeman, Hakkeling, and Sombroek ( 1990, 18) translate social
questions to mean the "kind of physical human intervention" causing
soil degradation. Gerrard's high esteem for Blaikie and Brookfield as
"authorities" goes little further than the platitude of describing soil
degradation as a "major world environmental issue" (Gerrard 2000,
177). For Oldeman (2002, 2) social criteria are equivalent to a vague
"human dimension," never seriously addressed. The sometimes cited
Blaikie and Brookfield's "regional political ecology," for example, has
had virtually no impact on soil science as a result of gross misrepre-
sentation (Boardman 2006, 74; Chen et al. 2002, 244; Safriel 2007,
2; see also Chapter 4).

It seems that eliminating straightforward expressions of revolu-
tionary commitment is mostly ineffective if the goal is to shape
soil science or change institutional policy frameworks. More impor-
tantly, relative to overall political arrangements and struggles, the
influence of these leftist efforts has been even more meagre. Nev-
ertheless, they remain worthwhile for at least three reasons. One is
in diffusing the perspectives of many people with exiguous political
power who rely on soils for livelihood. Their understandings (and
mine) can clash with official or even some leftist activist pronounce-
ments, such as in the relative importance of soil erosion or the very
concept of soil degradation (e.g., Bavliss-Smith 1991, 6; Brookfield
2001, 158-161; Sillitoe 1993). While it is true that this kind of
endeavour is fraught with pitfalls of misrepresentation and risks of
silencing while amplifying, one must also weigh it all against prevail-
ing institutional populationism and managerialism. This connects to
another reason, which is to counter not only capitalist propaganda
in the mainstream, but also misconceptions among leftists. Finally,

Leftist Alternatives and Failures

131

combining soils research with leftist perspectives is important for
t he development of alternative research programs, funding priorities,
educational curricula, and technical outreach.

A Critique of Most Leftist Approaches

Ostensibly leftist scholarship on soil degradation has been limited and
even critical frameworks have had limited impact, but they have at
least addressed w hat the vast majority of leftists do not or, worse,
surmise they adequately cover. As Engels put it, in his preface to Anti-
Durinjj, "knowledge of mathematics and natural science is essential
to a conception of nature which is dialectical and at the same time
materialist." 1 Leftists may be justifiably wary of these sciences, but
shying away from them or merely critiquing them from the outside
results in faulty political projects. If, as David Harvey (1996, 196) well
put it, socialists are to "know best how to engage in environmental-
ecological transformations" for socialist ends, it is astonishing how still
so little leftist work concentrates on creating the necessary knowledge
for such transformations (cf. Johnston 1989). As David Schwartzman
has forcefully pointed out:

. , . socialist theory has long lacked a full conceptualization of the technologi-
cal basis of an ecosocialist transition to a future global society Socialist or

Marxist political economy cannot theorize this transition by itself. The natural,
physical and informational sciences . . . must be fully engaged. These sciences
will inform the technologies of renewable energy, green production, and
agroecologies, whose infrastructure are to replace the present unsustainable
mode. Marx and Engels had prophetic insights into the ecological impacts
of capitalist society. But there has been little socialist engagement with the
physical and natural sciences necessary for a sustainable economy . . . The near
absence of ecosocialist theory and practice has left a space for the penetration
of Xeo-Malthusian and "end of growth" ideologies into the contemporary
green movement. We are treated to continual invocations of fallacious visions
of entropic apocalypse, leading to the die-off of civilization.

(Schwartzman 2009, 11-12)

While a dialectical materialist approach or an ecosocialist future may
not conceptually or politically find agreement with everyone on the
left, an alternative egalitarian society cannot sprout solely by theoriz-
ing and altering social relations. And one outcome of this failure to
grapple with biophysical processes is an inadequate understanding of
environmental degradation in the theorizations of some leftists (see
Chapter 4), some of whom even adhere to such reactionary notions

132

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

as civilizationism and populationism (see Chapter 5; Harvey 199^
191-197).

The problem is not so much a failure to reach out to other sciences
as much as the tendency for most leftist scholarship on environmental
degradation to refrain from active involvement (Peet, Robbins, and
Watts 2011, 10, 31) or to be disconnected from leftists' and critical
scholars' research on biophysical processes, if not the biophysical sci-
ences altogether. Much more is needed than translation or unifying
language (Harvey 1996, 190) to reach scientific unity. A concerted
effort is necessary among all concerned to surmount the lack of a
common political project among leftists, the prevalence of reactionary
or capitalism-accommodating views among academics, and powerful
institutional forces that divide scientists as workers.

Nevertheless, even if still rare, there is leftist and critical scholarship
that has undertaken the task of parsing through scientific works on
soils if not contributing to producing soil knowledge directiy. Such
work has also been done in the case of primatology with the work
of Donna Haraway, for example, and evolutionary biology, with the
work of Stephen J. Gould, Richard Levins, and Richard Lewontin. It is
thanks to these efforts that it has even been conceivable to carry out
the present endeavor. None of this discounts the importance of left-
ist research that shows the social and often socially oppressive basis of
environmental issues (or nature). But it is inadequate towards explain-
ing the environmental processes involved and it is patently ineffective
in moving the biophysical sciences in a more sensible direction or, if
one prefers, building an alternative to "western science." It is strik-
ing how the bulk of leftist scholarship on environment remains fixated
on addressing the social relations inhering concepts of nature or envi-
ronmental impacts without much research into biophysical processes,
even while discussing them. It is a most politically (including educa-
tionally) debilitating state of affairs rampant in the various ecofeminist,
social ecology, socionature, production of nature, political ecology,
and other openly committed leftist approaches. This institutionally
rewarded narrowness at times makes for an exercise in reducing the
ecological to a social appendage, 2 with nonhuman entities the ruse,
passive backdrop, or undifferentiated actor.

It is a most welcome sign that "nonhuman agency" is being taken
more seriously and without reproducing the environmental determin-
ism of yore. This would already make for a much more encompassing
approach to soil dynamics. For instance, Allison, Wallenstein, and
Bradford (2010) find that carbon dioxide emission levels from soils
may hinge on microbial activity- responses to temperature increases.

Leftist Alternatives and Failures

133

Johnson (2012) reports that, in a region of California, rodents have
been primarily involved in obliterating the effects of decades of indus-
^lized farming on soil structure, within 40 years after farming ceased
L t hc 1980s. These studies show that even in industrialized set-
g£gs human impact is not the sole force in shaping soils or even
climate change. Concepts like socionatures or produced natures, by
overestimating the effects of social relations, provide unnecessary
obstacles to explaining soil and other environmental dynamics. Yet
much of the work on nonhuman agency, like the rodent and microbes
case studies, concentrates on organisms, especially nonhuman animals
(e .g., Haraw ay 1991; Urbanik 2012 ), which suggests a difficulty with
incorporating other processes analytically (e.g., air movement, cation
exchange in soils, ocean currents). The insistence on agency (or a nar-
row understanding of nature-transforming labor) might be a principal
impediment, notwithstanding attempts by actor-network theorists to
by-pass the problem through acrobatic sleights of hand (see below).

In spite of recent efforts, the recrudescent interest in the nonhuman
remains as superficial on biophysical processes as soil scientists
on social processes. Part of the problem is the lack of direct or
active involvement in producing knowledge on biophysical processes,
which results in reliance on technical experts' interpretations about
nonhuman beings and forces. As demonstrated in the preceding chap-
ters, ideological constructs can obfuscate findings. Some examples
have already been pointed out in earlier chapters of uncritical borrow-
ings from soil scientists regarding the extent and severity of soil degra-
dation and the pernicious civilizationism and populationism, adopted
by some eco-Marxists and world-systems theorists (Chapter 5). To
plow through the obfuscation, there has to be careful analysis and
^interpretation of data on biophysical, not just social processes.
Accomplishing this requires knowledgeable reading and a greater
diversification of (updated) sources than usually appreciated. Thus,
soil quality indicators and soil erosion data can be very useful infor-
mation if reinterpreted relative to context and methodological limita-
tions, rather than taken as a set of transferable findings or data to suit,
say, political ecology purposes. Because too often leftist discussions
are inadequately informed about the subject matter, rather than offer
alternatives or insights, leftists at times fortify stereotypes or develop
arguments of doubtful validity.

It helps little when errors are made about describing environmental
degradation problems, like treating ozone layer depletion as a cause
of climate change (Mies and Shiva 1993, 277). There is also a ten-
dency to succumb to "popular imagination" (as do Peet, Robbins,

134

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

and Watts 2011, 13) by subordinating environmental issues to clj.
mate change. The otherwise laudable undertaking by Chris Willi anis
(2010) to demonstrate the ineluctably destructive nature of capj.
talism is representative of this reductionism. Williams is so focused
on climate change (with a full chapter dedicated to the topic) as
to lose sight of the inter-relationship of different forms of environ-
mental degradation and the mutually constitutive changes involved
in society-environment relations. It plays into a compartmentalized
understanding of environmental change that stifles the forging of con-
nections and imagining alternative political alliances. It is not that
soil degradation should necessarily gain more attention in such leftist
works. The fundamental problem is the inadequate study of environ-
mental processes and the treatment of ecological processes as separable
units or as nested hierarchy (with climate at the top), which forecloses
the possibility of seeing politically consequential ecological connec-
tivity and, ironically, converges with and thereby bolsters bourgeois
understandings of the environment. For instance, soils happen to play
a key role in planetary greenhouse gas biogeochemical cycling, yet
there is no mention of soils in Williams' chapter on climate change.
Here is a missed opportunity to draw together land struggles (which
usually imply changes in land use) and greenhouse gas emissions,
which points to the interconnections of environmental impacts from
different fractions of capital (landed and industrial/extractive ). More-
over, this could have been an occasion to demonstrate how much
worse the repercussions are than even climatologists expected when
permafrost regions warm up and greenhouse gases stored in soils are
released into the atmosphere. These are examples of what leftists miss
when they fail to analyze or study biophysical processes beyond social
relations. But the problem is regrettably even more profound. It con-
sists of denying equal importance to technical perspectives even while
paradoxically relying on them to explain and organize politically about
environmental degradation in the struggle against capitalist relations
of domination.

Social Theory Over-Reach and
Exegetic Maneuvers

The above inadequacies are a result and manifestation of a deeper
problem on the left: the appropriation of environmental issues
for social theory applications or the reinterpretation of texts from
renowned social theorists to search for insights about human-
induced environmental change. These are forms of social reductionism

Leftist Alternatives and Failures

135

camouflaged by theoretical lucubration. Thus, social theorists are
being recast as ecologists or environmental scholars. Karl Marx is cred-
ited by some with ecological sensibility- (Hughes 2000) if not a preco-
cious and superior ecological approach (Burkett 1999; Foster 2000;
jioore 2003). Even Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein are
being transmogrified into such attentive analysts of environmental
change that their works are deemed precursors to what is now called
environmental history (McMichael 2012, 139-145; Moore 2003).
But ecologically aware political economy, history, or sociology is no
(palco)ecology, Quaternary studies, or climatology. For when it comes
to the study of processes like climate change one relies not on Marx
or Braudel or Wallerstein, but on climatologists. Thus, McMichael,
in endeavoring to prove Braudel as keen environmental analyst, suc-
ceeds in demonstrating the opposite by pointing to paleoclimatologist
Ruddiman to buttress claims about climate change. And it could
scarcely be otherwise, given that Braudel's major insight about phys-
ical environments, that they are not fixed, adds nothing to basic and
well-known geological principles established well before Braudel was
even born. Similarly, Moore (2007, 136) shows Braudel's poor under-
standing of soils in the assertion that wheat production inevitably
results in soil exhaustion, rather than any insight into soil dynamics.

Using social theory to comprehend biophysical processes also
results in an impoverished epistemology. Foster (2013) claims, for
instance, that a materialist approach involves "Studying natural con-
ditions and limits," rather than processes, dynamics, thresholds, and
complexity, as increasingly understood in some Marxist thought (e.g.,
Harvey 1996, 48-57) and the biophysical sciences (e.g., Johnston
1989; Schumm, Mosley, and Weaver 1987; Scoones 2001; Zimmerer
and Young 1998). Such undialectical understanding of the "natural"
as mere conditions and limits ironically converges with the thoughts
of Foster's imagined arch-rival O'Connor (Foster 2002), who finds
Marx insufficiently materialist but then reduces the rest of nature to
static conditions of production, where capital can even "alter natural
laws" (O'Connor 1998, 46). This is inconsistent with his recognition
of the "autonomy of ecological and physical processes" (p. 37), but,
then again, O'Connor never really examines how autonomous eco-
logical and physical processes and changes interact with social ones
in the analysis of the relationship between ecosystems and capitalist
social relations. The issue is not so much an underlying society-
nature "dualism" (Castree 2002), nor is it, as the paranoid Burkett
(2006, 6-8) has it, a problem of O'Connor's "functionalist grafting
approach" fatally conquering ecosocialists' minds, drawing them away

136

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

from Marxism (and even from a dialogue with ecological economics
such is apparently the powerful lure of O'Connor). Dividing leftists
into camps of more or less and lapsed Marxists is a poor excuse f 0r
avoiding the more challenging task of making sense of ecological p ro .
cesses, which tend to be used as mere decorative receptacle filled with
a list of capitalist harms. The issue that should be brought to the f 0re
is that O'Connor's second contradiction thesis, much like Foster's
and Burkett's ecological Marxism, never examines change in envi-
ronmental processes. Such approaches therefore cannot distinguish
autonomous from human-induced environmental changes and instead
appeal to unsupported natural equilibrium arguments. Much of the
misconception about biophysical processes is traceable to repeating
the mistakes of Marx and Engels (see below) and ignoring the path
they showed, and underlined by Foster himself, of keeping up with
the biophysical sciences.

For similar reasons, McMichael's version of climate change, as
that of many leftists, is flawed. Instead of discussing the complexity
of atmospheric chemistry and global climate models, among other
pertinent issues, he reduces the interplay between greenhouse gas
emissions and atmospheric effects to a matter of C0 2 levels and human
action, ignoring other terrestrial and extra-terrestrial factors 3 (see also
Tanuro 2012). The superficial treatment of environmental dynamics
is also painfully evident in McMichael's sole focus on climate, which
appears as the only force of environmental change, as it apparently did
for Braudel, our suddenly environmental historian. There is climate
and the rest is some vague "environment." This is all the more curious
because McMichael, in the same manuscript, shows awareness of other
climate-altering physical processes within and outside this planet.
It appears that intellectual inertia, manifested through overwhelirring
emphasis on the social and on white male social theorists (who, for
example, tend to overlook or underplay social reproduction), is having
the better of otherwise very sharp minds. The current vogue of draw-
ing insights from social theory about people-environment relations
not only implies that the characteristics of environmental processes can
be subsumed under or can be treated in the same manner as social pro-
cesses, but also results in sometimes outright incorrect and politically
counterproductive arguments.

Metabolics

To illustrate the problem, consider the recent focus on the presumably
ecological content of Marx's writings. Foster ( 1999) has painstakingly

Leftist Alternatives and Failures

137

c odified this as a thesis of metabolic rift, an exegetic interpretation
that is blazing through many leftist minds (e.g., Clausen and Clark
2 005; McClintock 2010; McMichael 2008; Salleh 2010; Williams
2010). To summarize, Marx's ecological thesis is that the capitalist
mode of production entails a disruption (rift) in biophysical cycles
or processes, a rift in the exchange of materials between society
and the rest of nature (metabolism), resulting in a combined accu-
mulation and depletion of materials respectively resulting in toxicity
(waste) and degradation. Foster's efforts are commendable in show-
ing that Marx's overall theoretical framework and insights are crucial
to explaining the destructive tendencies of capitalist social relations
(s ee also Burkett 1999; Kovel 1995). And Foster's contributions are
important, as those of many others, in countering the typically dismis-
sive attitudes about Marx's work in activist and academic settings, not
just on matters of environmental degradation.

But the metabolic rift thesis makes of Marx not an ecologist, but
a shallow non-dialectical thinker. Marx studied neither the relation-
ship between people and environment, nor any biophysical process.
Foster (2000) extrapolates the ecological in iMarx from brief and
vague excursions in texts addressing subjects other than ecological
dynamics. In fact, it was much more Engels than Marx who wrote
about the rest of nature, but Engels was mainly concerned, as evi-
dent in his unfinished Dialectics of Nature (1883), with developing
a dialectical approach for all the sciences, not a study of ecosystems
or of society-environment relations. Marx's primary concerns and far-
reaching contributions were not about ecology, but about identifying
and critiquing the foundations of a capitalist mode of production
and contributing to a struggle for a communist society, besides
formulating an approach to explaining social relations and change
(cf. O'Connor 1998, 43; Tanuro 2010).

It is certainly the case that Marx and Engels exhibited concern
about environmental degradation and took seriously the relationship
between people and the rest of nature, and so did others during
the nineteenth century, like the naturalist George Perkins Marsh
and the anarchists Elisee Reclus and Pyotr Kropotkin. But Marx (or
Engels ), in contrast to these other authors, did not carry out any study
on human impacts. Instead, Marx was focused on social processes
even when arguing that the "writing of history must always set out
from . . . natural bases and their modification . . . through the action of
men" (Marx 1845, 149). His approach has no emphasis on studying
the rest of nature and its histories, which is fundamental to under-
standing people-environment relations. There is no development of

138

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

a dialectical approach relating environmental to social histories, k
claim that ecology was central to Marx's work is to beckon the
tion of why Marx did not formulate general theories on, say, hur^
impacts on soil development, if he was so concerned with soil depfe
tion, one of the main examples used to demonstrate xMarx's metabo|j c
rift approach. The reason for such missing theorization is that fy^
broached topics on nonhuman processes to explain one or anothcj
aspect of a social, not ecological process. The nonhuman component
of ecosystems was never seriously considered. Or, stated differently
Marx can only be regarded as having ecological understandings if
treats ecology as reducible to what concerns social dynamics, a notion
or ecology that makes interactions not involving humans inconceiy.
able and diminishes the universe to the dynamics of parts of a single
(human) species with whatever part of the environment they happen
to impact or rely on.

It is not solely on exegetic grounds that Foster's thesis is objec-
tionable. Moore (2011a) is justified in alerting us of a lurking
Cartesianism, whereby social relations and the rest of nature remain
apart in the process of material exchange (cf. Castree 2002). Yet the
problem with metabolic riftism is even deeper. As Harvey noted some
time ago,

Cartesian thinking has a hard time coping with change and process except
in terms of comparative statics, cause and effect feedback loops, or the lin-
earities built into examination of experimentally determined and mechanically
specified rates of change.

(Harvey 1996,62)

Metabolic rift describes and fixates on an outcome of capitalist human
impacts, rather than a process or change. Hence, the issue becomes
one of repairing rifts, instead of grasping the largely destructive trans-
formation of ecosystems as a mutually constitutive process. This is a
dialectical process, one that cannot be socially foreclosed because envi-
ronmental change depends also on what happens in the rest of nature,
not just in society. The repercussion in practice is the delusion that the
end of the capitalist mode of production leads to a return to some lost
stability and harmonious relationship with the rest of nature (Loftus
2012, 31-32), the obverse of the (human-free) museum version of
nature still promoted by many of the Greens Foster (2000) loathes.
Foster is thereby turning Marx into a thinker who, when it comes to
people's relationship to the rest of nature, suddenly lost his dialecti-
cal way. In fact, this may very well be the case. Marx's explication of

Leftist Alternatives and Failures

139

•ronmental change (e.g., soil depletion, metabolism) was derived
^borrowing uncritically from some contemporary reductionistic sci-
b ' s ts tor the purpose of argumentative expediency in responding to
C tionary approaches like that of Malthus.

rea j t s hould anyway not be surprising to find inconsistencies and errors
• any thinker. Tanuro (2010) has demonstrated the ecological fallacy
111 Marx's and Engels' lack of differentiation between renewable (e.g.,
!Lod) and non-renewable (e.g., coal) energy sources, as well as the
^ithoritarian political ramifications of following such logic. Schneider
McMichad (2010, 468-169) point out that Marx erred in his
iLlified rendition of farming as a nutrient flux involving human-
based manure and grain harvest and export.

Yet Marx's approach to biophysical processes was more deeply
flawed than this. In agricultural chemistry, at the time, soils were
viewed largely as passive, nutrient containers made of weathered-rock
material, a view sometimes reconstituted currently under nutrient
bu dget analysis (e.g., Scoones 2001, 11). Marx accordingly treated
soils as masses of inert nutrient repositories (see also Merchant 1980),
sometimes as if spatially homogenous, in spite of knowing better.
In remarking on the deeply destructive nature of the British invasion
of India, Marx (1853, 34-35) explained the contemporary "barren
and desert" landscape of "Hindustan" as the result of "the neglect
of irrigation and drainage" (an "artificial fertilization of the soil")
otherwise provided through a central authority. It was not until
the 1900s that soil and ecosystem variability in that "barren and
desert landscape" was scientifically appreciated. 4 To Marx, soils in
themselves were also static ahistorical entities, where "Capitalist pro-
duction . . . hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for
the lasting fertility of the soil" (Marx 1867, 505). Later in life, return-
ing repeatedly to soil in discussing ground rent, he recognizes that
there are different soil tvpes relative to fertility, texture, topography,
drainage, and topsoil depth (Marx 1894, 879-880). But soil "natu-
ral fertility" is subordinated to conventional notions of agricultural
productivity (see Chapter 3) and equated with "chemical compo-
sition," reduced largely to "the amount of nutrient elements lor
plants," a condition "pha^e by means of the application of chemical
(e.g., fertilizer additions) and mechanical (e.g., deep plowing) tech-
niques (ibid., 790-791 ). This conceptualization is what enables him to
state, in comparing factories to fields, that the "earth . . . continuously
improves, as long as it is treated correctly." Soils, viewed as inert "inor-
ganic nature" (ibid., 954), are deemed unchanging without human
intervention. Corresponding with Vera Zasulich in his final years, in

140

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

a wider and enlightening discussion on Russian peasants' revolution
ary potential, Marx (1881) suddenly forgets his appreciation for soil
variability when he remarks how the "physical lie of the land in R Uss j a
invites agricultural exploitation with the aid of machines, organic
on a vast scale and managed by cooperative labour." Just because land
is flat, it does not necessarily mean mechanical cultivation is feasible
or desirable. Soil texture distribution, for example, can affect the out-
come of mechanized farming, and often the result has been what Marx
could not have realized at the time, soil physical degradation through
compaction. If we were to follow Marx (i.e., nineteenth-century agri-
cultural chemistry) to develop an ecological approach, it would likely
mimic that of an unreformed US Army Corps of Engineers. Man
could not have suddenly forgotten what he knew about soil variability
if ecological processes had been central to his life endeavors.

Those wishing to convert Marx into an ecologist are confusing
Marx's use of largely illustrative people-environment analysis (to show
the fatuity of Ricardo's and Malthus' ideas) for a cogent theory on
ecological relations. It is a decontextualized reading of Marx that
does not dare ask the obvious, which is why Marx did not formu-
late a dialectical explanation of soil-society relations or, rather, why
his dialectical approach ran short when it came to explaining soil
quality change. This cannot be explained away by a lack of empirical
evidence available during his lifetime. Anthropogenic organic inputs
contributed to long-term accumulation of nutrients (see Chapter 2 ) 5
and ecologically sustainable practices could rest on nutrient imbal-
ances, as with shifting cultivation. Hence, sustained or short-term rifts
in material flows, whether cumulative or depleting, were not confined
to capitalist practices. The issue is one of degree and multiple inter-
acting factors, not rift. Marx could not have grasped this because
he did not himself study the subject and relied instead on others'
non-dialectical interpretations and research agendas, which precluded
the possibility of examining agricultural practices that did not con-
form to the requirements of commercial farming (there is, in this, a
still ignored consequence of settler colonial prejudice in the devel-
opment of soil science; see Chapters 2 and 3). Marx was conversant
with the publications of Anderson, Liebig, Johnston, and Carey (Fos-
ter and Magdoff 2000), but was apparently unaware of the' works
(in German, no less) of Senft (1857) and Fallou (1862) about soils
as separate phenomena with their own spatially variable characteristics
and historical development (formation from parent materials). If Man
would have read Fallou, for example, he might have arrived at dif-
ferent, less socially deterministic conclusions about soil characteristics.

Leftist Alternatives and Failures

141

Itx vas anyway not until 1870 in Russia, with Dokuchaev and Sibirtsev,
that institutional backing was secured to establish soil science as an
independent scientific field. The first extensive and systematic study
0 f soils was not available until 1883 (the year of Marx's passing),
with Dokuchacv's internationally influential publication of the study
0 f chernozems in Russia (Hartemink 2010). Darwin's only more
recently appreciated study of earthworms, which demonstrated the
organic and living aspects of soils, was not published until 1881.

Marx's notions of soils as inert, inorganic, malleable chemical
input-output boxes, without history or dynamic of their own, stand
in contrast to his dialectical approach. There is no study offered in
Marx w hereby social relations and soil dynamics are mutually con-
stitutive. Soil characteristics are simply taken as given entities shaped
by differing forms of human activity. This shallow treatment of soils
should warn against extrapolating ecological concepts from Marx.
If one expects Marx to have been a theoretician of metabolic rift, one
could then ironically fault Marx for promoting metabolic rift (e.g.,
indifference to soil variability, treating soils as inert things). This, of
course, is as illogical as extruding a theory out of inchoate and scat-
tered concepts. Making Marx to be what he could not be impoverishes
and diverts attention from Marx's profound contributions, especially
in understanding the workings of a capitalist mode of production.

To appreciate how and where Marx's work is crucial to explain-
ing people-environment relations there needs to be clarity about
what can be attributed to and learned from Marx. First, it should be
obvious that Marx did not theorize metabolic rift or formulate any
precursor to ecology, nor were those lines of inquiry central to his
work. Marx wrote no volume elaborating on the topic. The notion of
metabolic rift was part of using data on biophysical processes to bol-
ster a critique of social, not ecological relations in a capitalist mode
of production. Second — and consistent with Marx's objective of a sci-
entific study of society (not ecosystems) — metabolism, understood as
material exchange between society and environment, systematically
excludes the importance of material exchanges not involving people.
Third, by considering only human impact, the very basis for assess-
ing human impact cannot be established (neither was this part of
Marx's endeavors). There cannot be thereby any assessment of what is
to be considered a regular range or pattern of environmental change
( e -g-> geogenic levels of heavy metals in soils or pre-industrialization
greenhouse gases in the troposphere). Global climate variations or
landform degradation or soil erosion before humans existed or in the
absence of human impact simply cannot be explained, as there are no

142

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

exchanges of materials between society and "nature," nor, therefore
any rifts.

Refuting the metabolic rift thesis detracts nothing from the impor-
tance of Marx's contributions or even from Foster's and other Eco-
logical Marxists' insight, shared with some other leftist approaches
(ecofeminist, ecosocialist, eco-anarchist), that the capitalist mode of
production is inherently destructive ecologically (cf. Johnston 1989
199). If anything, by resisting contrived readings and inappropriate
applications of concepts, the rejection of the metabolic rift thesis
enables the highlighting of those theoretical aspects in Marx that
improve explanations of environmental degradation, like dialectics and
materialism. As stated above, Marxists trying to develop ecological
approaches should follow the example set by Marx and Engels them-
selves, who had a keen interest in and kept up with the most recent
scientific research. And they did so precisely because they were not
themselves studying or theorizing on those subjects, save occasion-
ally for Engels (1878, 1883). In this light, developing a dialectical
and historical materialist approach to science (e.g., Harvey 1996-
Levins and Lewontin 1985), as Engels had begun to do, makes for
a much farther-reaching and deeper contribution — and at the appro-
priate levels of abstraction — than forcing scattered peripheral remarks
to converge into constituting a theoretical framework.

Homeostatics and Teleology

The manner of appropriating Marx's work in the metabolic rift thesis
is also underlain by an assumption of preordained stability, reminis-
cent of notions of static equilibria and teleological theories in ecology
(e.g., Clements' idea of climax community). Both presume that a bal-
ance will be restored once the capitalist mode of production ceases
to exist, rather than viewing prospects for a new mode of produc-
tion to involve global and regionally specific challenges resulting from
past impacts (e.g., global warming, missing mountain tops, persistent
organic pollutants in fluvial and ocean sediment) and the dialectical
relationship between new forms of human impact and shifting inter-
relations among the myriad forces in the rest of nature, affected by
and simultaneously independent of human intervention.

Homeostasis surfaces, disappointingly, even in leftist conceptu-
alizations, particularly among activists. It is prevalent in anarchist
theorizing, at times claimed to be inspired by Reclus and Kropotkin,
but not developing any systematic approach that links social rela-
tions of domination and environmental change, save bv presuming

Leftist Alternatives and Failures

143

the former denies the harmony presumed in the latter (Pepper 1993;
purchase 1997). Within this framework sometimes reference is made
to bioregionalism, whereby the world is made up of distinct regions as
if no conflict existed among people regarding the extent of a bioregion
and the criteria to define it. It also cannot cope with resource-
procurement systems (e.g., pastoralism, shifting cultivation, seafaring)
involving migrations across a wide range of environments. Kropotkin's
approach is similarly teleological, using what he called a "kinetic"
inductive-deductive natural science approach that was expresslv anti-
dialectical (Kropotkin 1903, 38-39). For him, changes emerge from
both external pressures and internal contradictions between mutu-
alistic and competitive tendencies, bringing about tensions or crises
leading to new evolving forms of mutual aid ( Kropotkin 1902, 299).
Social processes are read uncritically out of a universal and teleological
broader nature in a Manichaean play of mutualism and individual-
istic competitiveness where inevitably mutualism emerges victorious,
even if constantly reconfigured. Reclus would have likely interpreted
society-environment relations more dialectically as human impact
bringing temporary changes that transform a place into developing
a new type of order (Clark 1997). This more dynamic understanding
has yet to be refined or challenged or applied towards explaining envi-
ronmental degradation (aside from generalities about people being in
or out of tune with an ecosystem).

Explanations of long-term or planetary social and ecological change
in world-systems theory fall into possibly more egregious harmony
quagmires. Chew (2005, 57) argues that "dark ages" (social systemic
crises ) enable the restoration of an undefined "ecological balance"
and attempts to compare the time-scales of social and ecological
change, blissful of the vast heterogeneity in physical and ecological
processes, which are all made into a mass of undifferentiated "eco-
logical time." A systems -oriented collection edited by Hornborg and
Crumley ( 2007) is replete with functionalistic arguments where social
change is environmental adaptation and with tendencies to treat soci-
eties as a single, internally indistinct entity ( this can also be traceable to
inadequate data resolution in the archaeological record). Sometimes,
factors like climate change and empirically unsupported demograph-
ics are attributed with causal powers over society with the banner of
environmental determinism at times unabashedly waved. For instance,
Meggers insists on environmental conditions constraining social devel-
opment in the Amazon Basin's shifting as a result of presumably
nutrient-poor soils. There are also too many assumptions about civi-
lization that are little different from what was critiqued in Chapter 5,

144 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

such as Alfred Crosby's chapter. In all this, soil features (if it f ea ^
tures at all ) as the receiving end of impact, mainly in terms of erosion
and presumed soil nutrient content, without any attempt to analyze
changes in soils and their effects on later society-environment devel-
opments. Worse, Meggers assumes nutrient content as unchanging
and completely ignores Indigenous Peoples soil management relative
to nutrient cycling (e.g., Hecht and Posey 1989), while Berglund p re .
sumes erosion to be traceable to farming without any comparative
analysis of soils in farmed areas with the sedimentary evidence (e.g.
lake varves).

Nevertheless, the volume contains some interesting reflections
on ecological and social dynamics, aside from some useful empiri-
cal studies. One debunks the idea of environmental degradation on
small islands resulting from solely local human impacts (rather, it
is incorporation into the capitalist world-system that generates such
fatal tendencies). Another further corroborates empirically the already
known lopsided flow of resources from the world-system periphery to
the core. The more theoretically promising works are those develop-
ing recursive models of social and ecological change (e.g., Berglund
2007). Ecological shifts are associated with social changes that become
cumulative, such that successive ecological change is met with a differ-
ent sort of human impact. Regrettably, there is no attempt to address
how human impact induces ecological shifts that affect subsequent
ecological change (except Emilio Moran's rather speculative thesis of
global climate change affected by land use change in antiquity) and
one is left with a notion that departs little from the usual narratives of
technological stages where the social relations that give rise to techno-
logical change are unexamined. That sort of understanding assumes
that when a technology is developed it will necessarily be used to
increase resource extraction. Focusing on changes in form and degree
of environmental impact relative to varying technological complexes
would help resist this pervasive capitalist view of technology.

In contrast to such relatively more dynamic modelling of the past
(cf. Moore 2011b, 132), claims of metabolic rift as uniquely capital-
ist phenomena are predicated on assuming ecological balance. They
imply a relative harmony between people and ecosystems before capi-
talism (Rudy 2001, 58), an argument discredited by findings of non-
equilibrium dynamics (Grabbatin and Rossi 2012) and undermined
by historical examples of non -capitalist environmental degradation
furnished by Foster (1994). 6 The metabolic rift thesis in particular,
just like Chew's "ecological time," unravels when applied to actually
existing ecological processes. In soil acidification, for instance, three

Leftist Alternatives and Failures

145

processes co-occur at differing rates that do not necessarily balance
( Helyar and Porter 1989; Sparks 2003). One is what happens in soil
water (seasonal to annual change), one is what happens at the interface
^tween soil water and soil particles (from nanoseconds to seasonal
variation, to secular trends), and another is what happens within soil
particles (secular to millennial trends/cycles). With multiple simulta-
neous processes at varying temporal scales, it is not possible to make
a case for metabolism, a balanced material exchange (e.g., between
people and environment). Human inputs (some substance or impact)
have no necessarily commensurate output (the transformation of a
substance or degradation). In fact, an acidifying input, such as syn-
thetic nitrogen fertilizers, may result in an insignificant output (little
t0 no acidification), if not possibly the opposite outcome, if lowering
pH in an alkaline soil enhances breakdown and nutrient release. Such
imbalances in material exchanges cannot exist according to metabolic
rift theory. Moreover, soil acidification, in environments where it rains
frequently, is a regular trend, with or without human impact (Sumner
and Noble 2003 ), so conceptualizing such an ecosystem according to
metabolism runs counter to the evidence of an inherent imbalance of
material exchange (e.g., hydrogen cations or protons added through
rainfall leading eventually to decreasing pH, the rate and even direc-
tion of pH change depending on soil buffering capacity and other
variables that can also change over time).

The issue should rather be whether and how human impact accel-
erates biophysical process (this is not a linear process, as liming,
manuring, etc. can counteract acidification sometimes for decades)
and, crucially, this is not reducible to a mode of production because
other organisms and also physical processes (which may or may not be
impacted by people's activities) are involved. Some of the biophysical
processes have nothing to do with a mode of production because they
have occurred before the existence of that mode of production. So,
for example, over the same area, there may be soils whose mineralogy
is such that they are more resistant to acidification than other nearby
soils. The effects of human impact from the same mode of production
will then have different outcomes (one soil acidifies fast, the other
does not acidify much at all) because of differences in soil mineralogy,
a process that takes millennia. This is all beyond the explanatory frame-
work of metabolic rift and yet it is essential in explaining changes in
soils. The metabolic rift, treadmill of production and other like theo-
ries are premised on as erroneous an understanding of environmental
change as that presented by Montgomery (2007b), where geologi-
cal erosion rates never result in soils disappearing (see Chapter 4).

146

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

It shares with mainstream soil science (cf. Lai et al. 2004) and wid er
bourgeois environmentalist ideology the notion that only people cause
environmental harm.

Capitalist World Ecology

Jason Moore (2011b), equally prolific a writer as Foster, has made
impressive strides in reconceptualizing capitalist social relations to
account for the ecological processes on which it, like any other social
system, is based. In this, he is much ahead of most other social theory
approaches. He seems, however, to be largely doing political ecology
without the necessary detailed attention to actual biogeophysical pro-
cesses present in at least some of those works (e.g., Carney 1991;
Swyngedouw 2004; Turner 1998). The otherwise most welcome
emphasis on the capitalist mode of production is actually similar to
the work already done decades ago by Blaikie ( 1985 ), for example, but
without the caution. The main difference with political ecology seems
then to be in the scale of analysis, the branding of the approach ("cap-
italist world ecology"), the elision of socially reproductive processes
(while claiming otherwise), and the inadequate ecological analysis,
among other problems (Moore 2003, 2010b, 4-5, 2011a). Aside for
the complete disregard for, among others, feminist theories and schol-
arship, some of the weaknesses in the approach stem from Moore's use
of limited or unreliable paleoecological data and reliance on social the-
orists and environmental historians to carry out analyses that require
biophysical research (see below r ).

But the trouble is epistemological. Capital is the sole protagonist
and capitalist productivity is adopted as the standard to evaluate every-
thing and everyone. This is evident in Moore's concept of capitalist
global ecological relations and in the commodity frontier thesis of cap-
italist expansion induced by "ecological exhaustion" (i.e., both social
and nonhuman). 7 In this thesis, capitalist expansion is putatively pro-
pelled by capitalism-induced "scarcities [that] emerged through the
intertwining of resistances from labouring classes, biophysical shifts,
capital flows and market flux" (Moore 2010b, 39). The concept
and thesis exaggerate the social (the part) over the ecological (the
whole) and, in a reinforcement of settler colonial fantasies, make of
social struggles and nonhuman processes mere residuals of capital-
ists' active shaping of the world. The commodity frontier thesis is
about human labor productivity (Moore 2010a), only peripherally
about ecological dynamics, which end up as carpeting for capital-
ist treading pleasures. Anti-colonial struggles, continuing to this day,

Leftist Alternatives and Failures

147

become mere resistance, not active shaping of the world, and they dis-
ppear entirely when "ecological exhaustion" has been reached. The
Xecurnseh rebellion ("labouring classes"?), for instance, has no role in
t he "scarcity" created by capital. Or imagine capitalist sand grains, pine
trees, earthquakes, squirrels, and so on, all turning communist when
a communist world emerges. The commodity frontier thesis, fur-
thermore, reduces ecological change to a capitalist underproduction
problem (Moore 2011b, 110, 113), mimicking the mistakes made by
O'Connor ( 1998) and Wallerstein ( 1999), among others. Very little is
therebv revealed about what is being impacted where and how, which
is what actually matters when it comes to livelihoods and survival.
Rather than omitting, exaggerating, and diminishing, one could sim-
ply state, as many have done, that the capitalist mode of production
is undermining the ecological conditions that favor human and many
other organisms' existence.

There is also at bottom a lack of dialectical materialist under-
standing of historical society-environment or ecological processes.
His otherwise compelling historical reinterpretations leave no room
for ecological transformations that affect and are affected by social
ones. For instance, climate change (Moore 2011b, 125) suddenly
enters the picture as a historical variable (until then all ot "nature"
is treated as passive substrate with no influence on society), but is
treated ahistoricallv by claiming an analogy between current global
warming at the planetary scale with the Little Ice Age affecting "feu-
dal Europe" in the fourteenth century. Europe is Earth and climate
change is all of a piece, with respect to cause, effect, and characteristics.
With such superficial analogy, there can be no historical materi-
alist understanding of changes in society (e.g., capitalism-induced
industrialization) contributing to accentuating global warming trends
since the last glaciation and, in turn, how changes in atmospheric
chemistry, brought about in part through social change from some
societies, have been leading to changes in those societies them-
selves and in other societies relative to differential effects of weather
extremes, regional aridification tendencies, environmental movements
pressuring for technological and hence economic shifts, and so on.

Moore's interpretations of ecological processes also confine real-
ity to the dynamics of current capitalist systems projected into the
past, leaving no scope for any intertwining with other contemporary
modes of production and their ecological impacts. Is one really to
understand, for example, that wetland soils shaped by hundreds of
years of Ojibwa land use make no difference to water resources used
by capitalist European settler colonists? Is worldwide environmental

148 t:

Lcology, Soils, and the Left

degradation (which kind?) just a matter of capitalists constat
moving on to new "commodity frontiers" because of "scarcities 2
ferennally created by social resistances intertwined with ecologS
shifts and market flux" (Moore 2012, 69)? There lurk some £2
empirical problems in this fable of "hit and run" capital leading
worldwide environmental degradation and a presumably final peak!
world resources. For one thing, resource exhaustion is assumed „«?
proven, and ecosystems are treated as if mere containers (sec'beW
on soil exhaustion), rather than dynamic interrelations. This impo£
.shed view of ecology also cannot explain, for instance, forest diffe '
ential regeneration in formerly deforested areas and the develop m £
of large capitalist firms using resources from regions where apparent
resources had been exhausted (e.g., Tvson Foods). The outcom ^
resource extraction are not so simple or straightforward. One mu !
reckon with ecosystem diversity, multifarious linkages between diffo
cnt societies and ecosystems, and social struggles impacting land u«
and technology change and applications, among other issues. Thm

n h W f " ■■ P erS P ecti -" n ™> rather than "opens up J

analysis of all forms of human experience to the interplay of hurm
and biophysical natures" (Moore 2010b, 4). There is a long way ^
reach the level of ecological understanding Moore so ambitiously
poses and the answers are not forthcoming from pouring over 'social
theory texts but from studying biophysical processes as well.

Repercussions of Social Theory Over-Reach

It is for eminently practical reasons that it is a futile effort to turn

a° dLTadTti V " T^^T" * ^ M °" —™

Ul degradation, rather than learn critically from people with actual

biophysica science expertise. Bluntly stated, it is emphatically not bv

usmg social theories that one can describe soils or develop a gZ o

he, r funcnon. Social theory approaches do not enable any ide'ntil

tion or description of processes like erosion, microbial diversity OM

ormauon, or CEC, which are crucial to understanding son de^aT

Xn e t ; e 8 n Ue T t0 ° ls * ^ ^orv

processes 1< ""^J* P r ° cesses that cannot distinguish such

b in? b e to^r 1 " 8 fr ° m ? rming indUGed ^ erosion - And yet
being able to differentiate them ramifies into political strategy Large

^concerns and more diffuse farming operations cannofbe S

xp laintLr 6 ^ T " " hCnCe littlC pr ° S P eCt ln Sodal theory for
STZSiT C £ " Pr3CtiCeS impaCt S ° ils without 1 « r ™ng about
soils themselves. There are also direct impacts to leftist politics from

Leftist Alternatives and Failures

149

sU ch social theory over-reach and misunderstandings of environmen-
tal processes. Eco-Marxist exegetics, for example, is emerging in leftist
outlets like the Australian Green Left, w here readers are informed that
-Marx had a coherent approach to ecology, which emphasized the
historically conditioned, co-evolution of nature and human society"
^Butler 2013). The ecological insights coming out of such a coherent
approach are certainly clear and clearly far from Marx.

Soil Misadventures in Leftist Narratives

In most leftist theories on the environment, the existence of soils is
sometimes acknowledged, even exalted, sometimes even allowed a
major role in a play, but not major enough for most leftists to be gen-
uinely interested in what they are like, how they differ and connect
with other processes, how they form or fall apart, how their charac-
teristics develop and change. Soils (like the environment) often serve
as social theoreticians' display models, to be summoned when con-
venient and just as readily removed from view when they no longer
exhibit potential as explanatory expedient. But soils are like specters
haunting theory, because once they are summoned, they can unleash
all sorts of unwelcome surprises. Or, rather, those are the unexpected
gifts that attentiveness to soil dynamics can impart, as witnessed in
the above appraisals of some leftist approaches. And so it is that the
more soils are expected to be the same, the more diverse they are,
the more they are deemed exhausted, the more lively and fecund they
become, the more their degradation is depoliticized, the more unruly
and political the degradation turns. In short, the less one knows or
thinks about them, the more insidious they become. An absence of
soil or truly ecological analysis can derail leftist arguments towards
dubious conclusions and lackluster politics.

Soils as All of a Piece

For all the ink consumed to express greater sensitivity towards
nonhuman processes, biophysical processes like soils are still too often
treated as indistinguishable, unchanging backdrops in the explana-
tory frameworks of leftist scholarship. There is a long illustrious
history of negligence towards pedodiversity. It might not undermine
entire theories, but it does reinforce some dangerously inaccurate
mainstream notions and lessens the left's overall credibility in pro-
viding a workable alternative to the capitalist mode of production.
In the above discussion, it was shown that Marx's appreciation for

150

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

soil variability was inconsistent, in part because soils (or ecosyste^
generally) were not the focus of his studies. Yet the characterization 0 f
soils as homogenous substrates dies hard on the left and probably f 0r
similar reasons.

Carolyn Sachs, for instance, connects soil degradation to the
gendered inequalities and androcentric expansion of capital, bringing
increasing mechanization and intensification of land use, male monop.
olization of farming technologies, and marginalization of women's
(often manual) work. The ensuing problems are differentially exp e .
rienced according to gender, with women tending to be more neg.
atively affected (Sachs 1996, 56-65). However, these claims rest 0n
assuming differential changes in soils relative to impact to be irrelevant
to social change and hence to patriarchal arrangements. No actual soil
analysis is anyway provided in support of the theory.

One manifestation is in presupposing tropical soils to be frag,
lie and infertile, a colonizer notion that has been refuted decades
ago in the mainstream of soil science (Schaetzl and Anderson 2005
388-392; Showers 2006). O'Connor (1998, 44) asserts that both
farming and ranching have failed in Rondonia (Brazil) because tropi-
cal rainforest soils have been "disturbed." This stereotype of tropical
soils is repeated in Foster (1994, 24). Meggers (2007, 196) misplaces
her justifiable concern over current deforestation in Amazonia by
insisting that soils in that region could not have sustained dense seden-
tary populations, thereby making the error of assuming not only soil
homogeneity, but also, as Hornborg points out in the same volume,
of completely isolated societies. 8 These views are contradicted by actu-
ally existing pedodiversity and centuries of soil-altering agriculture,
including in Rondonia (Cochrane and Cochrane 2006), precluding
the possibility of homogeneous effects on and of soils.

Bernstein and Woodhouse (2006, 150) reinforce the same miscon-
ception about tropical soils in Africa. A mere glance, say, at the Soil
Atlas of Africa (Jones 2013), which is partially based on extrapolations
from 1970s and more recent data, already reveals much soil diver-
sity within the tropical forest zones even at such low resolution. The
authors could be spared critique, given when the atlas was made avail-
able, but even the much older world soil adas from the FAO 9 would
have shown similar information. If the authors would have applied
the same interpretive criteria to tropical forest zones as they do about
savannas, such as referring to the existence of "localized diversity of
micro-environments" (Bernstein and Woodhouse 2006, 152), they
could have contributed to countering stereotypes about tropical soils
and tropical ecosystems more broadly (cf. Brookfield 2001, 86-8$;

Leftist Alternatives and Failures

151

Schaetzl and Anderson 2005, 388-392; Scoones 2001, 4; Stocking
7003; see also Kiage 2013).

Minqi Li (2006, 443) uses data presented and interpreted by
grown (2003) to argue that industrial expansion in the People's
Republic of China (PRC) is causing widespread soil erosion and will
probably raise strains on environments worldwide to overcome food
production shortfalls. As pointed out earlier, soil erosion in the PRC
has been overstated and is regionally specific, which means that vast
areas may be little if at all affected by soil erosion to the extent often
portrayed (e.g., Ho 2003; Schmidt et al. 2011). Moreover, relating
food production to soil degradation is fraught with difficulties in con-
trolling for the effects of political economic processes (e.g., input
prices, government subsidy), interspecific relations (e.g., pathogenic
outbreaks), and weather variability (e.g., short-term droughts) (see
also Stocking 2003). Brown's interpretation of the evidence is to
say the least debatable, making Li's argument rather weak about
future crop productivity in the PRC. When more attention is paid
to what soil scientists in the PRC are reporting, as Minqi Li does
with Dale Wen (Wen and Li 2006, 138-140), it becomes obvious
that the problems are multiple and much more insidious and long-
term ones include crop heavy metal contamination from such sources
as industrial processing plants, mines, and agrochemical applications
(cf, Wong et al. 2002). This still does not support Li's earlier con-
clusions or it could modify the specificity of expected outcomes.
In tact, if one were to assess the sort of impact soil degradation in
the PRC might have on the rest of the world, one might also want
to pay attention to widespread soil acidification from nitrogen fer-
tilizer use (Guo et al. 2010), which could raise pressure on mining
within the PRC, the world's largest lime production area. 10 If one is
serious about organizing against capitalist encroachment with respect
to environmental degradation, then one must have a fuller grasp of
the environmental processes being considered. This can be helpful in
devising pre-emptive strategies and actions.

The soil homogeneity assumption brings similar analytical flaws in
the edited environmental history volume by Hornborg, McNeill, and
Martinez-Alier (2007). Hughes' informative and insightful overview
of environmental impacts associated with changing social relations in
the Roman Empire departs from most such discussions by highlight-
ing the diverse forms of impacts on soils, namely erosion, salinization,
and heavy metal pollution. However, he does not provide anv actual
analysis of the evidence for soil degradation. Erosion is assumed
to accompany the destruction of (or perhaps change in) vegetation

152

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

cover, as if there were no erodibility differences. Sedimentation p ro .
cesses resulting from soil erosion are presumed to result in predictable
locations of accumulation without any sedimentological research and
without heeding the warnings of many soil scientists about erosion-
sedimentation dynamics (see Chapter 4). Current landscape condi-
tions in North Africa, for example, are mistaken for the results of past
impacts (cf. Lowdermilk 1953) and salinization is traced to human
impact without attending to climate change and its relationship to
regional overall human impact. In fact, the timing of the crisis of
the Roman Empire in the third century suggests that the cumulative
environmental degradation was not decisive, given that the imperial
system lasted hundreds more years. It would anyway be more of inter-
est, from a leftist perspective, to learn about the relationship between
social struggles and environmental change, rather than focusing on the
relative stability of a rather horrific authoritarian system (see Chapter 4
on civilizationism). Widgren's discussion of landesque capital (invest-
ments in land improvement) and its effects on subsequent land use
addresses soils only insofar as they enter economic valuation processes.
The approach is unsurprisingly of soils as unchanging in themselves,
as if only humans modified soils, and as uniformly changing accord-
ing to human labor inputs. Soil dynamics are also regarded as though
isolated phenomena. Soil erosion is taken up, for instance, but not
analyzed relative to effects on other parts of the landscape, which
could affect landesque capital elsewhere. In the rest of the works by
Myrdal, Moore, McNeill, and Tainter, soils receive even less analytical
attention in spite of the weight of the claims made regarding erosion
and exhaustion. None of these studies account for soil dynamics as a
result of failing to analyze soils and ignoring soil science research that
would assist in such analysis.

The above-critiqued work by Moore, as a result of its laxity relative
to biophysical data, also confuses similarity of human impact (which is
often asserted, rather than shown) with similarity in ecosystem alter-
ation, failing to account for ecosystem diversity and dynamics. In one
instance, Moore (2012), in his zeal to show the interconnectedness of
human impacts across the world resulting from capitalist expansion,
pretends that soils in some northern temperate areas (parts of Poland)
are indistinguishable from those in a few tropical zones (coastal
Brazil). But soil diversity cannot be so easily papered over. They
must be examined to detect the extent and form of impact defor-
estation and plantation systems had on soil conditions so as to gauge
whether and how altered soil dynamics affected sugarcane and cereal
crop production. The problem of assumed homogeneity is repeated

Leftist Alternatives and Failures

153

in Moore's claims that the "capital-intensive family farm" in North
America was involved in the "world -historical appropriation of soil
god water, formed over millennia," creating "the conditions for cheap
food" and major consequences in terms of reorganizing labor forces in
different parts of the world (Moore 2011b, 130). This presumes soil
diversity is irrelevant to food production at the continental scale and
that sufficient information exists, at the same scale of analysis, about
s0 il conditions and impacts on soils more than a century ago. But the
same sort of impact, using the same technology, (e.g., a tractor), does
not yield the same results relative to how soils change (e.g., clayey
soils likely feature compaction effects under machinery, depending
on technique, such as timing and frequency of tractor use). Regret-
tably, Moore has yet to demonstrate the world ecology side of the deal
because he remains too focused on the social processes. At the same
time, because of the fixation with capital, he largely misses social con-
tradictions within capitalism and contemporaneous ecosystem changes
brought about by other modes of production. If the aim is really to
analyze the world, it is curious how most of it remains left out.

Being similarly remiss on the nonhuman side of the world, Williams
(2010) treats soil dynamics ahistorically, as a matter of cropping
suitability or nutrient balance sheets. With respect to the first,
Williams identifies the responsibility of world financial institutions in
dispossessing farmers of land, but then claims soil degradation ensued,
without specifying where or what type, "because the crops now being
grown were not suited to the soil, and farmers were pushed onto more
marginal land, thereby accelerating soil erosion" (Williams 2010, 55).
It is unclear whether he means growing crops in urban soils or new
crops in the soils once cultivated by now displaced farmers. Either
way, in places like Jamaica, to which Williams alludes, there are regions
where many crops would be unsuitable anyway, as a result of low pH
(Hennemann and Mantel 1995 ) and there is a sordid history of plan-
tation agriculture that has not only been harmful socially, but has also
contributed to changes in soil quality, sometimes for the long-term
(depending, e.g., on pre-existing soil type). Plantations also do not
necessarily bring negative impacts on soils. For instance, pine planta-
tions have been found to reduce soil erosion more than the previous
forest cover in Jamaica (Richardson 1982). Regardless, ignoring the
hundreds of years of effects of slave plantations on soils is not flattering
for an otherwise powerful, approachable leftist analysis of capitalism.

As for accelerating erosion on marginal land, one must always
be mindful of local conditions of erodibility before making general
pronouncements and the concept of "marginal land" should always

154

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

be viewed with suspicion relative to what it actually means (i s j t
marginal for maximizing cash-crop yield or for meeting local subsis-
tence needs?). With respect to the second instance, Williams claims
that in capitalism a problem like soil depletion is solved by creat-
ing another through the fertilizer industry (Williams 2010, 232).
fact, the application of industrial fertilizers has at times led not to
depletion, but to the accumulation of nutrients like phosphorus. The
overall pattern of capitalism is certainly one of degrading soils, but the
link between capitalism and soil degradation should be shown, not
assumed, because it also depends on the nonhuman factors involved.
The lack of comprehension about soil degradation is also manifested
in its entry on a list of "environmental threats" (p. 4). Once soil
degradation occurs, it is no threat; it is an actually occurring process
and sometimes a veritably irreversible disaster, in the case of activated
acid-sulfate soils.

Finally, an entire thesis can fall when human impact is taken as the
only changing variable and when there is no accounting made for
changes in soils. For instance, Peet, Robbins, and Watts (2011, 25)
posit that "Where markets are generous . . . capital is often available to
reinvest in the environment, to rest the land, or to subsidize or main-
tain soil nutrients." Besides providing no support for such contention,
it should be evident that impacts like sealing, compaction, or heavy
metals and organochlorines contamination do not simply disappear by
giving a soil some bed time. They can last for decades. Nutrients will
not magically get replenished when soils are acidified or heavy met-
als contamination or excessive liming interferes with plant nutrient
uptake. "Generous market" conditions do not necessarily yield soil
nutrient recovery.

Exhausted Soils: Bedtime for a Tired Story

The above lack of appreciation for soil diversity enables the use of
soil exhaustion 11 to explain past or current social change, especially
in populationist rhetoric (see Chapter 5 ). According to this view of
soils, different or similar human impacts result in soils depleted at vir-
tually the same rates, irrespective of their wide-ranging diversity. It is
surprising, especially in light of the above -described critical work on
soil fertility and erosion discourse since the late 1970s, to find leftists
referring to soil depletion as an explanatory factor without much qual-
ification or supporting empirical investigation (e.g., Peet, Robbins,
and Watts 2011, 24-25 ). Besides resting on little to no evidence, these
kinds of arguments exemplify a lack of awareness of or concern for

Leftist Alternatives and Failures

155

soils research and critical appraisals thereof. Relying on assumptions
0 f soil depletion leads to tenuous arguments with sometimes unhappy
theoretical (and political) consequences.

One could start by learning from the mainstream experts. Pedro
Sanchez (2002, 2010), an authority in tropical soil fertility and head
0 f Columbia University's Earth Institute, has used soil depletion
(assumed to be linked to population growth) as an argument to
explain malnutrition and/or famine in Africa. The insistent solution
proffered has been simply to add mineral and organic fertilizer, surely
a huge discovery for farmers. Yet, after decades of imputing food
shortages to soil nutrient insufficiencies, the same Sanchez (2013)
now describes a sudden change of fortunes (an "African Green Revo-
lution"), promising an end to food underproduction and largely due
to shifts in government interventions and policies that result in greater
access and use of fertilizers, among other means of production. 12
Apparently, there is much more to soil depletion than adding fertilizer
and stirring (cf. Fieri 1992; Scoones 2001). The uses of soil fertility
to explain what is largely unrelated to soils (e.g., malnutrition in a
context of agricultural exports and with food overproduction in many
parts of the world) should serve as a lesson, but it appears some leftists
have yet to heed it.

Merchant's ecosystem model of historical change rests on assert-
ing a decline in soil fertility and accelerated erosion in the 1300s to
explain the combined effects of population growth and landlord exac-
tions in ushering "the breakdown of the medieval agrarian economy
and ecosystem" (Merchant 1980, 47-48). However, if soil degrada-
tion does not coincide with the 1300s, mass famines necessitate other
explanations. It is more likely that relations of domination would
have created conditions for famine, rather than human-induced soil
degradation, whose linkage to social change is very difficult to prove.
In other words, it is entirely unnecessary to resort to soil exhaustion
as part ol explanations of past social change. Multiple environmen-
tal variables are typically involved in crop production and discerning
soil fertility from other effects is already a formidable challenge in the
present, let alone the past (see below).

On the other hand, Wallerstein (1974, 37), not as focused on
ecosystem change, describes one theory explaining the crisis of
feudalism as implying declining farming productivity due to soil
exhaustion. He also repeats the notion that high nutrient demand
from sugar cane plantation systems fuelled expansion into new lands
(Wallerstein 1974,44 and 89^ 1980, 161-165). There are other exam-
ples of borrowed assertions about soil quality, none of which are

156 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

supported by any evidence (Wallerstein 1980, 41, 132-133). Satisfied
with magnified soil nutrient extraction being explained by economic
cycles, Wallerstein misses the opportunity- to question the validity 0 f
the assumption of soil exhaustion on its own terms. He also fails to
account for soil and ecosystem diversity, which would enable him to
appreciate the complexity involved in the relationship between soil
type and sugar cane production. It is not a given, for instance, that
nitrogen (a major nutrient) would impede the maintenance of sugar
cane on the same land under labor-intensive technological complexes
in the 1500s to 1700s. This is because many areas of Brazil fea-
ture abundant biological nitrogen fixation (Medeiros, Polidoro, and
Reis 2006). Moreover, sugar cane tends to thrive in more clayey tex-
ture (nematodes can turn the crop more easily into their meal with
sandier conditions) and tends to be tolerant of acidity and aluminum
uptake (enhanced with low pH). These characterize some of the
major soils in Brazil ( Hetherington, Asher, and Blarney 1988), pos-
sibly contributing to the reasons for supply exceeding demand "more
frequently in tobacco . . . than in sugar production" (Wallerstein 1980,
165; cf. Moore 2011b, 126).

Largely repeating Wallerstein's errors and omissions, Moore
(2010b, 6-8) explains the crisis of feudalism in Europe by relying
on assertions about occurrences of soil depletion, mere "irritations''
under capitalist conditions, which, unlike feudalism, hinge on labor
productivity. He thereby reinterprets the crisis of sugarcane planta-
tions in Madeira in the 1500s as one of soil exhaustion relative to
labor productivity 7 . It is excellent on Moore's part to point out that
soil fertility' is contingent on social relations, but he seems to confuse
actual soil conditions for estimations thereof, which are contingent
on the politics of land use (see Chapter 3). A decline in soil fertility
may be only relative to monocultural sugarcane plantations, but not
to other cropping systems, and sometimes, depending on the diver-
sity of soil conditions, it may not be a matter of soil exhaustion as
much as prevailing techniques used and/or prolonged unfavorable
weather conditions. By taking soil exhaustion and much else as given,
he misses the opportunity 7 to debunk a myth, which he reinforces,
while he creates another by arguing for the inability 7 of feudal sys-
tems to raise "land productivity" relative to "population growth" and
ruling classes' resource demands, without any critical diachronic and
spatial analysis of data on feudal population dynamics, its relationship
to consumption patterns and thereby impacts on soils, or on actual soil
and other environmental conditions during those centuries (Moore
2002).

Leftist Alternatives and Failures

157

Moore (2012, 83-84) similarly overstates his case by arguing for
soil exhaustion in Brazil and Poland as propelling arable land expan-
sion into forests, without considering the many factors involved and
the bewildering soil variety' that may point exactly to a lack of soil
depletion and a rather different reason for deforestation. Likewise,
presumed soil exhaustion in Poland, this time through both cultiva-
tion and erosion, is used to bolster an argument about a 50-75 year
"socio-ecological" cycle of commodity 7 frontier expansion and con-
traction. A historian's insistence on soil exhaustion in the 1660s is
brought to bear to convince us of its link to massive downfall in farm-
ing production during the same period. The process was allegedly
amplified by deforestation-induced erosion, leading to more nutrient
losses. The fallacy of this argument regarding soil erosion has already
been discussed in Chapter 4. To his credit, Moore consults pedologists
(Klimowicz and Uziak 2001), something rarely done, but he misin-
terprets the findings. First, the study is limited to the Lublin Upland
(SE Poland), where there is a predominance of erodible soils formed
on loess or loess-like deposits. Second, the pedologists caution that
kk in the undulating terrain it was impossible to distinguish the exten-
sive erosion resulting from the length of the cultivation period and
the local erosion attributable to other causes" (p. 179). Farming, in
other words, is one among other erosive factors to consider. Not too
tar away, Schmitt et al. (2006) report massive deforestation-induced
gully erosion between the 1300s and 1500s in the Roztocze loess
area, but as a result of iron and glass industry, not farming. What is
more, the subsequent periods were one of managed reforestation until
deforestation restarted in the 1800s. Even within a single area charac-
terized by highly erodible soils, erosion sequences are highly variable
both in terms of causes and chronology. Farming-related deforesta-
tion and soil erosion in the rest of Poland might be even more fanciful
an assumption. Moore's commodity 7 frontiers theory, resting as it does
on presuming rather than proving "ecological exhaustion," is as ten-
uous as it is unnecessary to demonstrate the historicallv devastating
impact of capitalist relations on people and the ecosystems of which
they are part.

The much touted modification of "world ecologv" prompted by
the expansion of Eurocentered capitalism (Wallerstein 1974, 44) still
must reckon with soil and ecosystem diversity 7 before it can become a
credible formula. In Wallerstein's later work, curiously, soils virtually
disappear from any explanatory framework, as if to suggest their irrel-
evance to capitalism by the 1730s ( Wallerstein 1989) or, more likely,
the self-imposed irrelevance of such social theorv to paleoecological

158 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

investigation. This is not to discard the importance of looking i nto
how places very far apart have come to be entangled under an overar-
ching capitalist mode of production. Moore's undertaking is laudable
in this respect. However, this cannot be at the expense of finding out
actual ecological change, which can also reveal the ways in which cap-
ital has been foiled by combinations of social struggles and ecosystem
processes that are not socially determined.

Notably, it is not specialized scientists who, the Sanchez's of the
world notwithstanding, resort to such exhaustion terminology 0 r
claims of plant nutrient declines in soils. And this is tor good rea-
son. Soil exhaustion is "system fatigue due to overuse," which is w a
temporary change that can be remedied through change in land use"
(Lai et al. 2004, 18-19). As Richter and Markewitz (2001, 4) under-
score, soil u is rarely if ever completely exhausted, due to a continuity
of inputs that include solar energy, OM, nutrients, water, and gases."
Moreover, soil depletion implies crop productivity, which involves
more than soils. This is one reason that soil nutrient status is not as
easy to determine as implied by soil exhaustion proponents. There
are actually many factors involved and analyses are further compli-
cated when attempting to link soil nutrients to actual crop yield. For
instance, there may be plenty of nitrogen in a soil, but it could be tied
up temporarily on clay surfaces or in the bodies of micro-organisms,
depending on what is influencing the biogeochemical cycling of nitro-
gen in a soil at a particular time. When it conies to crop yield, it is
even more difficult to account for the contribution of soil nutrients
because plant-growth factors like sunlight, seasonal rainfall patterns,
temperatures, and the relationship of crops with other organisms can
change from year to year. Soil nutrient status is only one among
many variables to consider when attempting an explanation of crop
yield patterns. Interpretations of past environmental practices get to
be even more tenuous because the evidence order is reversed. Crop
yield is often used to arrive at soil nutrient status, as if there were
no other variables involved in plant growth. The least that needs to
be done is to control for climate variables (e.g., seasonal temperature
ranges, rainfall timing and amount), interspecific competition (e.g.,
weed infestations, pathogens), and below-ground community inter-
actions (e.g., earthworm activity', fungal propagation) that affect the
form and amount of nutrients available, to name only three salient
factors. These are difficult enough to account for in the present, let
alone the past. In fact, those that evoke soil exhaustion usually do not
even bother to control for any variables, if they even comprehend that
crops do not depend on soil nutrients alone.

Leftist Alternatives and Failures

159

Be that as it may, the notion of exhaustion begs the question of
#hat is exhausted. There could be a depletion of OM, which not only
gffects the amount of nutrients, but water retention, soil temperature,
long-term nutrient retention, among other properties. There could be
a loss of acid-neutralizing (buffering) capacity, which not only affects
tn e availability of nutrients, but can lead to heavy metal toxicity prob-
lems in plants. There could be a decline in nutrient availability as a
result of the accumulation of salts in a soil. Stating that soil deple-
tion is happening therefore does not say much about why nutrients
are unavailable to crops and it does not distinguish between nutri-
ent unavailability and actual nutrient decline in a soil (e.g., by way
of leaching, harvest export). There can be, in other words, bad har-
vests with little to no nutrient decline as a result of other changes in
soil properties. This alone should make one wary of soil exhaustion
arguments, but it requires a study of soils to arrive at such precaution.

Even if one does not care about making such distinctions and one
is just interested in whether nutrients are available to crops or exist
in sufficient quantities in a soil, it makes a rather substantial differ-
ence which nutrients and whether they are macro- or micronutrients.
This might appear pedantic until one understands that what can lead
to reduced or stunted crop growth (and thereby yield) can be due to
insufficient amounts of a single nutrient, not of nutrients per se. This
would mean, in the case of nitrogen ( a macronutrient ), that replenish-
ing nitrogen levels would reverse the problem relatively readily by, for
example, growing leguminous cover crops and/or spreading manure.
But if the difficulty is with having enough phosphate (as in much
of Australia) or some micronutrient, such as boron, then it will take
much greater effort to raise the levels of those nutrients (e.g., mining
to produce phosphate fertilizer or select phosphate-rich manure ) or
crops will likely have been selected that do well under such conditions.
What is imputed as a generic problem of soil nutrient depletion may
pertain to one or several nutrients and the question could be about
fertilizer inputs and crop selection, rather than about soil degradation.

This is an especially important aspect to consider when explaining
people-environment relations in the past. Soil exhaustion is often used
to explain social problems, such as increased economic pressures on
peasants or peasant unrest, or environmental impact, such as farmland
abandonment or increasing deforestation. In light of the above, this
would be to commit at least two major errors of interpretation. One is
misconstruing the problem. There may actually not have been much
soil exhaustion at all and instead a temporary reduction in one or more
nutrient, which can be remedied, depending on soil type. The focus

160

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

then needs to be redirected towards the ecosystem and social processes
that prevent nutrient replenishment. There may also instead be othe
environmental factors that have little to do with soil nutrients, such as
greater pathogen activity. Another error is founding entire interp reta
tions of the past on mere assertion. Exhaustion is simply assumed to
have occurred and, adding assertion upon assertion, to be directiy tied
to the amount harvested.

Soil exhaustion arguments rest on unsupportable assumptions that
when used to explain social upheaval, become a veritable house
of cards. It is therefore unsurprising that interpretations of history
founded on a soil exhaustion thesis can be so easily disproven as soon
as one includes evidence of other influencing variables, like politically
driven constructs (e.g., Earl 1988), changes in agricultural techniques
(Benjaminsen, Aune, and Sidibe 2010), or past regional climates (e.g.
Simms 1982). Claims of soil exhaustion as a socially disruptive factor
rather than reveal anv social effect of environmental change, usu-
ally betray a lack of knowledge of soil processes that can lead to
misinterpreting environmental change and misrepresenting causation.
Rather than simple robbery (i.e., depletion of nutrients by grain har-
vest and export), as some describe the process, uncritically borrowing
from Marx (uncritically borrowing from Liebig), soil nutrient decline
implies a matrix of multiple sources and exchanges, of harvest extrac-
tions relative to nutrient-holding capacity (involving also intrinsic soil
properties) and additions from people and many other sources.

Actant Soils: Death by Actor- Networks

Actor-network approaches, alternatively, could enable the supersession
of such blatant failures to attend to actually existing ecological rela-
tions. Yet for all the promise of overcoming dichotomies and including
nonhuman agency, actor-network theorists seem to be baffled by
soils. Latour (1999) hops to the Amazon to follow soil scientists at
work and uses soils research to prove his notion of circulating ref-
erence. In this manner, he completely misunderstands the scientists'
grassland-forest study by paying attention more to the differing termi-
nologies of the scientists ( a botanist, a pedologist, and a geographer)
than the substance of the research. Failing to educate himself about
soils, Latour becomes a ventriloquist making the pedologist claim such
absurdities as "savanna . . . degrading the clay soil necessary for healthy
trees into a sandy soil in which only grass and small shrubs can sur-
vive" (Latour 1999, 27). 13 Losing himself in a circular reference of his
own making, Latour scuppers the chance to persuade scientists of the
merits of his approach.

Leftist Alternatives and Failures

161

In contrast, Robbins' excellent study of lawns, where Althusser's
ideological state apparatuses meet Latour's networked actants, curi-
ously leaves out much of the turf from the elaborate lawn people
ne t\vorks so eloquently unfurled to explain persistent biocide use
(Bobbins 2007). The diverse and numerous soil-dwelling organisms
and the mining concerns behind the mineral components of turf are
systematically excluded (see Chapter 3). Yet such manufactured soil
would reveal a much greater and denser network that would explain
the fate of biocides and the full workings of lawns, as part of urban
soils rather than residential units. And with that soil go all the organ-
isms that also enable the grass to grow by affecting nutrient availability,
aeration, water flow, and many other processes crucial to plant life.

Duvall (2011), on the other hand, discusses the plausibility of
treating soils as actants in "scientific actor networks" that (amazing
discovery) are only inert relative to human life spans and that may
diverge from the roles assigned by scientists. As if taking readers for a
ride, he examines not soils, but the divergence, since the 1950s, of set-
tler colonial scientific theory about ferricrete ( an indurated iron-rich
soil layer) in Africa.

Although authors cannot be expected to cover all the possible areas
revolving about a theme, the oversights in these works are no accident.
They are products of actor-network approaches themselves. In their
hasty dismissal of positivist science, they take for granted or down-
play (if not ignore) the scientific knowledge that is actually central to
explaining the networks and even the emergence of the actants. Ironi-
cally, actor-network approaches become more effective at annihilating
nonhuman agency than conventional scientists studying biophysical
processes.

In the case of Robbins, urban soils findings that pertain directly
to law ns are summarily eliminated through actant selection. Duvall,
in contrast, conflates a duricrust type of soil layer (ferricrete) with
the entire soil and seems uninformed about the wide-ranging rates
of change of soil processes (from split seconds to thousands of years)
or the sheer bustle of life forms and physico-chemical reactions that
typify soils. By treating soils as actants operating over a single time
scale, the analyst erases the agency of all the organisms, as well as the
water, the air, and the mineral and organic materials that compose
a soil.

Secondly, analytical categories seem often confused for existing
subjects. This process of reification comes into full bloom when actor-
network theorists attempt to capture soils with their flattening nets,
downsizing soils to actants, as Duvall and Latour do. The notion
of soils as single, internally coordinated units thus returns us to

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nineteenth-century agricultural chemistry and evinces the great strides
made in social theory by ignoring the biophysical sciences.

Reification is connected to a third problem, the limit imposed on
the scale of analysis and of the actants selected. It is an arbitrary
that exposes the disingenuousness of claiming to examine phenomena
without preconceived notions of hierarchy, power, and other such pur-
ported research crimes (for an overview, see Castree 2002). 14 It may
be unclear whether clay minerals or entire soils should be regarded
as actants, but it does seem clear enough who decides on defining
the actants. The plug for the happy "parliament of things" carousel
is controlled by the person carrying out the research and the social
power relations in which the researcher is enmeshed. Xonhuman sub-
jects are not in some queue waiting to be selected by humans for
enrolment in the carousel. The joke is on the actor-network analyst
who, by not actually studying or interacting with nonhuman processes
or beings, confuses social interactions with relations among people
and nonhuman subjects. Happily, there are scholars like Robbins who
avoid such confusion by closely attending to research on biophysical
processes (save, as yet, for soils and the much larger actor-network
they would force upon the analysis).

Finally, there is a tendency for people-environment interactions
to rely on nonhuman agency, implying a prerequisite for actants
to be capable of actively shaping their world. This transfers with
great difficulty to phenomena like, say, sand particles. This problem
could be circumvented if the presumption of methodological equality
among actants is relinquished so as to allow differential world-shaping
capability. In the case of soils, due attention to their composite sta-
tus, rather than treatment as homogeneous masses, would markedly
improve analysis. Unfortunately, in current actor-network approaches
to soils, agency is entirely effaced, as soils, when they are not disap-
peared, become inert substrate. Duvall's intervention only deepens the
argumentative hole by pointing out, incorrectly, that such passivity is
relative to a rate of change beyond human life spans (temporal scale),
thereby throttling all the actual liveliness in soils while trying to rescue
them from their assigned passivity. It is certainly useful to pay "close
attention to the details of scientific practice" (Latour 1999, 24), but
not when one disregards the subject towards which scientific practice
is directed.

Chapter 7

-Xmtte: —

Toward an Eco-Social Approach
to Environmental Degradation

While some critical works offer alternatives on ways to analyze and
interpret biophysical processes like soil degradation, they are often
short on social critique, stopping precisely where leftists usually begin,
such as in arguing explicitly against capitalist social relations and,
rarely, developing ideas about egalitarian anti-capitalist alternatives.
Comparatively, the left has been long on critique but short on devel-
oping alternative ways of understanding and explaining biophysical
processes, especially soils. One way that such problems emerge is
by failing to incorporate into the analysis what is known about the
biophysical processes related to the type of environmental degradation
investigated. This volume is an attempt to addresses this missing aspect
of most leftist scholarship. It draws from what others have already
developed theoretically regarding environmental degradation, but
underlines the relative independence of the "natural bases, 1,1 which
form the analytical starting point of research on people-environment
relations; hence the preference for the term "eco-social." That is, the
ecological or biophysical being a much larger multifarious set of pro-
cesses, ecosystem precedes the social, even if it is we that sense, know,
interpret, analyze, in other words, determine its meaning. To state the
obvious, this is evident in our very bodies, an ecosystem in itself. The
heart beats regardless of our awareness of it and yet that beating plays a
fundamental role in enabling us to be aware. Soils degrade regardless
of our awareness of that process and even without human interven-
tion, and yet they, as ecosystems, enable us to have consciousness
through food production, water storage and flow, and much else.

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This way of approaching people-environment relations resembles
Elisee Reclus's implied understanding, where first the globally more
encompassing nonhuman dynamics are discussed, such as oceans and
climates, with social processes squarely within a host of natural ones
such as life forms generally (Reclus 1869). Methodologically, how-
ever, this eco-social approach draws from Marx, who proceeded from
a common, unremarkable social product (e.g., the commodity) to
unveil the workings of an entire mode of production (e.g., the cap-
italist one). In the case of people-environment relations, I suggest
starting from a biophysical process (e.g., soils) to expose the work-
ings of specific eco-social relations (e.g., soil degradation in capitalist
contexts). This was how this volume to a large extent proceeds, start-
ing from soil and its dynamics. Along the way, I discuss soils' relative
independence from and inherent ties to social processes (e.g., soil
knowledge, classification, evaluation) and hence soil degradation as a
set of soil dynamics specific but not reducible to ways of impacting and
understanding soils in predominantly capitalist contexts (one could do
the same for dynamics involving soil development in connection with
another mode of production).

Soil, as one way to discuss the biophysical, what cannot have agency
in the organismal sense, is also what has been missing by and large in
leftist worldviews. This is so even when one offers an alternative dialec-
tical evolutionary approach, as David Harvey has (1996, 190). That
is a much more profound and fecund perspective than the one devel-
oped here, but environmental forces remain passive, inert, subject to
transformation. Compared to the herein advocated eco-social path, a
largely opposite route and objective are taken, along the way losing
the environmental subjects. The departure is from a social or socially
induced environmental outcome (e.g., crisis narratives about the envi-
ronment, global warming) and, with biophysical processes sometimes
almost a mere pretext, the destination is an essentially social out-
come (e.g., reinterpretation of environment, capitalist relations). But
sidelining the biophysical subject does not make it disappear. And, as
shown in the preceding chapter, once we return to the biophysical, it
can wreak havoc on inattentive leftist theories and politics.

An Eco-Social Framework

Despite persisting uneven geographical spread and quality- of soils
information, numerous case studies from many parts of the world
(beyond faulty national inventories, unrepresentative field experi-
ments, and crapshoot simulation models) support the contention that

Eco-Social Approach to Degradation

165

soil degradation is occurring and is worldwide. However, the scien-
tific knowledge produced about soil degradation has to be critically
a ppraised. Briefly, the very notions of soil and soil quality have to be
clarified and related or compared to the actually lived experiences and
knowledge of those using soils. Whether a soil is degraded or not
will depend not just on qualities observed in the soils themselves but
a lso on the uses and conceptualizations people have about soils. This
entails comparisons among points of view and data-gathering methods
before any conclusions can be reached. Ascribing value to changes in
soil properties (positive or negative, for example) has to relate to social
context.

Once it is determined that a soil is degraded according to soils
experts involved (not just outsider scientists), then the process can
move to explaining soil degradation. The issue is not only what people
are doing and in what way (by whom?), but also whose perspective or
benefit is represented and/or reinforced (for whom? ). In other words,
not everyone is directly contributing to degrading soils or to defining
what soil degradation means. In many societies, some people are more
socially empowered than others to exert an influence over how soils
are used and to what purpose (power relations), what even constitutes
soil degradation (authoritative knowledge), and what is to be done
about it (legal frameworks, policy, enforcement strategy, etc.). One
should further consider that the type of impact depends on the out-
comes of place-specific and mutually influencing people-environment
relations. Human impact on soils involves multiple meeting points in
a complex of nonhuman and human processes. So the modification of
soils, whether positive or negative, should be studied as the result of
both wider environmental dynamics and processes specific to a given
social system, along with their connections to processes elsewhere and
to planetary effect.

Here is one idea of how to proceed analytically to make sense
of soil degradation. After careful scrutiny of scientific knowledge
(data-gathering methods, soils data and their interpretation, etc.),
several processes could then be considered in the analysis and expla-
nation. This was in essence the example discussed in Chapter 1. The
approach can be schematized as a quadripartite framework whereby
four processes must be considered all at once (to the extent possible ):

(1) soil and associated ecosystem dynamics;

(2) social and ecological/soil interactions and histories;

(3) interconnections with social contexts elsewhere (the larger scale
of social processes); and

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Ecology, Soils, and the Left

(4) interconnections with larger-scale ecological processes (which
include human impacts).

Much like non-equilibrium ecology, these processes have to be under
stood according to their multiple aspects of time (duration, rates, and
range of change ) and space ( extent, degree and type of interconnec-
tivity, and heterogeneity). In short, the manner in which social and
soil processes are connected and the manner in which the connection
is understood depends on how long (or for how many generations)
people have lived off specific soils, how and to what extent people deal
with soils as part of everyday experience, and what kind of changes
have happened or are happening in a society and in an ecosystem. All
these processes contribute and are related to what happens and/or has
happened in other places.

These four general processes should be considered always present
and interacting. As they interact, they generate diverse permutations
of soil degradation or human-abetted soil stability or, in terms of
wider applicability, of people-environment relations. The processes
are necessarily social and nonhuman at the same time and together
create multiple scales for different phenomena, as others have also
underlined. Borrowing from Levins and Lewontin ( 1985) and Harvey
(1996), the interactions among the four processes are mutually con-
stitutive (dialectically related). The emphasis here is also on the
interactions between the biophysical and the social (e.g., social rela-
tions and biogeochemical cycling of nitrogen and phosphorus), not
only those within one or the other, and this means prioritizing differ-
ent sets of questions and research objectives that necessarily leave both
social and biophysical scientists dissatisfied.

A brief example of focusing on interactions is via human impacts
leading to accelerated soil acidification in a humid temperate zone
floodplain. This can necessitate the use of lime (leading to greater
pressures on communities near large mining operations), if such lime
can be had, or the abandonment of food production in affected
areas, or other such social changes that, in turn, bring about differ-
ent land uses affecting soil quality. This could be in the recovery of
soil acid-neutralizing capacity sufficient to reintroduce food produc-
tion or this could be in the permanent alteration of soils leading to
other uses, such as a coniferous plantation or a parking lot, depend-
ing on political dynamics and outcomes, which largely determine land
use decisions (with the understanding that environmental practices
and their outcomes depend also on nonhuman processes). A conif-
erous plantation would likely result in further acidification, and a
parking lot would be tantamount to soil sealing and raising water

Eco-Social Approach to Degradation

167

runoff velocity. Social relations behind human impact (e.g., pressures
on farmers to maximize cereal crop yields by using urea-rich fertil-
izer, leading to accelerated acidification ) constitute and are constituted
b>* nonhuman processes (relatively high rainfall providing a tendency
f or soil acidification in the first place). As we impact and modify
environments, we are changed in the process.

Underpinnings of an Eco-Social Perspective

Much of this endeavor has in common with what has been called polit-
ical ecology, but mostly the variant that has involved actual research
on social and biophysical dynamics, rather than just focusing on
the human part of nature. The latter focus continues to overwhelm
leftist approaches on environmental degradation (e.g., socionature,
produced nature, cyborgs, hybrids, world/Earth systems). Doing so
affects research priorities and the form of political struggle, among
other consequences never quite openly discussed. At the same time,
those perspectives usefully overlap (or may be redundant) with what
Marx had already identified, which is that people are part of nature
and dialectically related to it in a differentiated unity (Harvey 1996;
Loftus 2012, 32-35; Marx 1867, 173). These days die overlap may
come a bit short in some approaches on the dialectical part (at times
regarded as just another dichotomy), as Castree (2002 ) sharply notes.
Yet the social continues to be so pronounced, if not overstated, as
to diminish an already exiguous understanding of the nonhuman in
social theory.

Dissatisfaction with these approaches stems from my unease with
an ontology that, in a justifiable allergy to society-nature dichotomies
and dualisms, 2 treats other organisms and physical forces as insepa-
rable from society and centered about social relations. The problem,
however, is not about whether they are separable. If the privileging of
the social is an outcome of fretting over environmental determinism
or essentialism, the solution would be much easier than the convo-
luted expressions and theoretical contortions on offer. It should be
enough to call obdurate dichotomists or dualists out for the onto-
logical force of pretending that we are outsiders to life or physical
forces. For if we are, we might as well call ourselves supernatural or
dead and do some impressive intellectual gymnastics to explain why
we are made of elements also found in things and other beings, to
explain what enables us to live, like the microflora and other organ-
isms dwelling in our bodies, to explain the constant cycling of water
and minerals between us, other organisms, and the physical environ-
ment, or to explain how we come into being in the first place. What

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Ecology, Soils, and the Left

is brought about by human beings' actions or consciousness and even
consciousness itself is impossible without things and other beings th at
compose our very bodies.

There can instead be a qualified, non-hierarchical differentiation
between us and the rest of nature (or artificial and natural), which
seems the usual alternative, but this makes for an impossible equiva-
lence or for a reduction of nature to what is or can be differentially
sensed or experienced by people (see also Harvey 1996, 194). Con-
trary to an appeal to some inherent mixed bags that pretend not
to rely on separation to arrive at mixtures or networks (hybrids,
socionatures, etc.), the rebuttal to the usual dichotomy could then be
stated thus: humanity (or society) is incommensurable to what encom-
passes countless things and beings. In other words, juxtaposing society
and nature is ludicrously vague and obscenely inaccurate. It is vague
in that the actual relations that we confront and that markedly differ
from each other are collapsed together, whether viruses or plants or
buildings or solar radiation. It is inaccurate because people never con-
front the totality of the rest of nature (and in any case confront parts
of it differentially). The universe is much too large for that. In fact, so
are soils, and people rarely interact with entire soils, but usually with
bundles of processes manifested within the topmost horizon.

None of this argumentation is really new, and it adds mainly a
difference in expression and emphasis. Yet many professing to over-
come what are patently false dichotomies or dualisms either pretend
a flat world of ready-made agents or tend to fixate so much on the
social (or on making the biophysical intelligible to social science) as to
impede discernment and analysis of nonhuman processes. The former
set of views paper over enormous differences in capacities (power) and
frequently stop short of asking who determines the scale of analysis,
what/who counts as nonhuman, and the conditions under which the
nonhuman features as part of a story, thereby evading issues of power
relations (cf. Castree 2002; Kirsch and Mitchell 2004; Latour 1991;
Robbins 2007). For the latter set of views (cf. Haraway 1991; Harvey
1996; Moore 2011a; Salleh 1997; Smith, 2006; Swyngedouw 1996),
the processes in our bodies that happen beyond our consciousness
of them or the discovery of anything new outside the social become
unnecessarily difficult to explain or even to research, since one is to
be interested only in what is socially produced or co-produced with
society.

Because for me studying soils, not only society, is fundamental
to explaining soil degradation, my propensity is for a process ontol-
ogy that insists on not two or several (e.g., networked actants),

Eco-Social Approach to Degradation

169

but countless inter- or unrelated forces (processes) with highly
differing powers (in both positive and negative senses), within and
beyond our awareness (Gare 1993, 145-148). Viewed this way, the
unexpected, the contingent, or the unintended of many scholars'
people-environment narratives is an impoverished way to describe the
outcome or often analytically unwieldy interactions among many dis-
parate and (semi)autonomous beings and forces (Robbins 2007, 137).
This kind of ontology enables research informed by social theory
t0 tear away from the asphyxiating society-nature compartmental-
ization in the sciences and venture into such areas as paleopedology,
without which it would not be possible to explain soil formation pro-
cesses. To comprehend and explain people-environment relations, the
study of processes happening without direct or even indirect human
intervention is as important as the study of social relations. Such
a multi-process ontology is thus not an alternative, but a comple-
ment to the above -cited perspectives, which are not obsessed as I am
with biophysical processes. Studying nonhuman processes compels
me to recognize an enormous qualitative and quantitative asymme-
try between the biophysical and the social that is within it. This
says nothing regarding the nature of (semi)autonomy. Some pre-
sume that positing such relative independence leads to essentialism
or even depoliticizing environmental degradation (White 2006), but
such concerns are misplaced. To paraphrase and add to Lenin ( 1908,
102-104), our identifying or knowing a process does not determine
that process' existence, but this does not mean that such a process has
the same capacities or status as people or other processes.

Lest one get all worked up about implications of environmental
determinism in this argument, let me emphasize that to recognize
society (humans) as one (actually tiny) part of nature is not to subor-
dinate the social to the ecological, nor is it to minimize the influence
of human impact on possibly the vast majority of ecosystems the
world over. On the latter aspect, there is much evidence in support
of there being a disproportionate influence by a single species (or,
more precisely, sub-populations of a single species), but it does not
mean having overall a greater influence than all other natural forces
combined. For instance, with respect to climate change, we are living
in an interglacial period, peppered by stadials (cooling) and intersta-
dials (warming). It is a global warming trend that spans millennia.
Human impact is accentuating an already occurring phenomenon and,
conceivably, the same phenomenon could be mitigated by combina-
tions of nonhuman forces. In future, any simultaneous large volcanic
eruptions, for instance, could reverse the process and lead to a global

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cooling trend, depending on other nonhuman factors, only some of
which can be affected by human impact (e.g., ocean currents, the dis-
tribution and behavior of photosynthetic organisms). There is much
at stake here that is also political. Pinning the course of planetary
environmental change on the overcoming of a set of relations within
sub-populations of a single species will constitute yet another loss
of credibility for the left if nonhuman forces combine to reshape
global atmospheric dynamics toward less drastic outcomes than antic-
ipated. The notion that one species can change everything simply by
reducing its own impacts should be considered absurd and politically
short-sighted.

Similarly faulty is any melting of the social into a generic ecolog-
ical. Our understanding of nature is, in part, a social endeavor, as is
our existence in general. In this, I am repeating what many already
have stated in different ways, including Marx (1844). We are a dis-
tinct species, but are part of nature. The matter can be summarized
quite simply. When studying a soil or a population of ants, it is we
that do the interpretation of what we observe, not the soil or ants.
A soil is not going to educate us about how to observe it, define it,
delineate it, sample it, or anything else related to their study. Ants, sim-
ilarly, do not tell us how to identify them, systematize their behavioral
characteristics, sequence their genes, and anything else myrmecolog-
ical. It is people that teach or otherwise show other people what to
observe, how to observe, how to interpret results, and all the other
processes involved in studying physical environments or nonhuman
organisms.

At the same time, it is not our socialization into specific obser-
vation and understandings of environments or nonhuman organisms
that determines their existence or our observation of them. There is
constant interaction between the observer and the observed (and who
is doing the observing could also be questioned, at least relative to
other organisms; the observer-observed distinction is not so clear-cut)
and the interaction is not reducible to observer-observed relations, so
what we observe is also shaped by physical processes and/or other
organisms. To give some mundane examples, the very act of digging
to expose a soil profile alters the soil itself and severe weather can
disrupt and modify the investigation of a set of soils and even alter
their characteristics (e.g., a large sudden influx of salts on coastal soils
or a sudden high erosion episode due to a hurricane or a tsunami).
Similarly, knowledge about ants is not just the result of our observa-
tion and study of ants. Some researchers, for example, have described
fire ant queens (Solenopsis invicta) flying, after mating, at low alti-
tudes in large numbers, periodically landing in different places, and

Eco-Social Approach to Degradation

171

x vith almost no accompanying males. This was something previously
unknown to ant specialists. It has led to new understandings in that
such swarms seem directed at finding multiple-queen nests where they
can be accepted as new reproducers (Goodisman, De Heer, and Ross
2000 ). Irrespective of some scientists' recourse to genetic determin-
ism to try to explain ant behavior, a determinism regrettably shared
by most entomologists (and too many others), it is clear that it is the
jn ts themselves that, through their activity, showed the observing sci-
entists something that forced a rethinking of this particular type of ant
behavior.

Scientists studying soils or ants have been motivated socially and
have been taught their respective fields of study; they are in conver-
sation with other scientists and people at funding institutions about
the subjects they study, responding to, refining, or applying other
scientists' theories and dealing with what institutions like universi-
ties and/or funding agencies deem important or legitimate. Scientists
sometimes consciously or unconsciously reproduce current bourgeois
ideologies about nature (which are really about society)- However,
these social processes form but one of many other factors that, in the
study of nature, are not human in origin. This interaction between
nonhuman worlds and the social aspects of scientific practice has been
pointed out by many others, especially in the critical study of conven-
tional science. Our understanding of environments or ecosystems is
therefore much more than social. It is an eco-social process, involving
interactions between people, other organisms, and physical processes.
But this understanding is always partial not only because of the impos-
sible omniscience implied in scientific objectivity ideology (Haraway
1991), but also because it is impossible to study all of nature (and
often even just one ecosystem ) at once, in its totality. There are always
many other organisms, many physical forces that are involved and
make a mockery of any scientific certitudes about nature (including
our own). Knowledge of nature is necessarily provisional because it
is predicated on the shifting outcomes of the interactions of multi-
ple natural processes, including social ones. In a way, for a leftist take
on ecology, one could start by amending Marx's insights on history
(Marx 1852) so as to forge out of it an eco-social grasp of history.
People make their environments (and bodies ) only in part and under
pre-existing conditions resulting from past environmental change and
people-environment interactions.

Epistemologically and methodologically, this eco-social approach
implies that one should not privilege any one of the above-described
process or use any one of them as a primary starting point. The ana-
lytical starting point is all four processes at once. Otherwise, if one

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Ecology, Soils, and the Left

begins with or emphasizes one of the processes, overriding or poten-
tially key aspects of a socio-environmental problem can be missed
entirely (for some examples, see Engel-Di Mauro 2009). The feasi-
bility of analyzing all four processes depends on available data and
on what is considered legitimate or relevant knowledge. Hence there
has to be cognizance and investigation of the politics of (or struggles
over) resource allocation for different types of research and of knowl-
edge production and diffusion (this is something that continues to be
understated if not elided in, for example, actor- network theory; the
"enrolment" of the nonhuman is also a political process).

Political ecologists that actually study biophysical processes or other
organisms seem closer to this kind of eco-social view. Where I might
part ways with likely many such political ecologists is in their zeal to
demonstrate the contingency and complexity of people-environment
relations (the highly differentiated nature of environmental degrada-
tion) at the expense of formulating a perspective mindful of overar-
ching systematic tendencies. Recognizing overall unity 7 or sensing a
common set of relations operating through disparate processes does
not necessarily lead to being remiss of differentiation or to privileg-
ing unity or globality over difference or specificity. More importantly,
the issue is one of political strategy. In a context of immense chasms
in power and material well-being and of widespread oppression and
destruction, separating unity from difference is a more pernicious
dichotomy. This is what animates my search for a general theory of
soil degradation related to capitalist social relations.

Toward a General Eco-Social Theory of Soil
Degradation and Capitalist Social Relations

There are actually enough data, insights, and analyses so far on soil
degradation that any timidity 7 toward a general theory is as unwar-
ranted as leftist theorization devoid of biophysical approaches. It is
not enough to critique predominant views on soil degradation with
contravening evidence or analyses. Even if it could use refinement and
more data, a theory can and should be developed to counter expla-
nations of soil degradation as caused by population density, poverty,
mismanagement, and any other such superficial understandings of
social causes. Very briefly, and something to be taken up more thor-
oughly in a later volume, there is, in spite of chronic underproduction
of soils information, a highly destructive tendency inherent to the cap-
italist mode of production, for reasons already well explored by many.
However, to return to the insights of Piers Blaikie (1985), this is not

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173

necessarily resulting in any fatal contradiction, underproduction crisis,
peak soil, or any catastrophe.

Soil or environmental degradation should be rethought as two
interrelated eco-social fields. One is the set of biophysical processes
involved and that includes society. That is, one field is the socially
caused actual modification or destruction of soils such that human life
cannot be supported or is debilitated. The degree to which such is
the case depends on variable physiological needs among affected peo-
ple. The level of threat soil degradation poses is difficult to determine
without detailed contextualized data gathering and analysis and with-
out studying biophysical processes. Another eco-social field is the set
of social relations of domination. These include the capitalist mystifi-
cation processes of raising alarm where there instead needs to be more
research and of developing (poorly supported) arguments targeting
anything but the powers that be. Stated differently, depending on
the historically variable and mutually influencing relationship between
people and soil (or other ecological) dynamics, capitalist destructive
tendencies ( 1 ) have resulted and are resulting in actual devastation for
many (but not all) of the least empowered communities and (2) are
creating problems where they arguably do not exist (e.g., soil exhaus-
tion) so as to facilitate the intensification of capitalist control over the
means to life, as many have pointed out (e.g., Mies and Shiva 1993;
Swyngedouw 2007).

The secret to sustained soil degradation under capitalism in areas
of the world where this can be confirmed, especially industrialized
settings, lies in the interrelated occurrence of more soil resilience
and regenerative capacity than appreciated, the existence of soil that
remains exploitable for capitalist ends, the emergence and spread
of often gendered sustainable practices by way of widely different
communities resisting within capitalist systems (e.g., anti-colonial
movements, organic farming associations), colonial parasitism on con-
temporary sustainable practices in non-capitalist societies, and the
often forgotten benefits inherited from millennia of past non-capitalist
uses of soils (e.g., terra preta, plaggen soils, soil enrichment through
past sedimentation). This is but a preliminary reading and much more
information and analysis are necessary to support, modify, or reject
this explanation. Eventually, it would be even more useful to carrv out
a project focused on the mutually constitutive connections between
multiple modes of production, differential impacts on soils, and soil
processes.

Discerning the wider biophysical from the social relations that
affect its understanding requires attention to another set of

174

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

interrelated processes. One is the scientific or analytical (claims relative
to evidence) and the other is the interpretive or perceptual (inter-
pretations and approaches to soils, within and beyond science). The
heterogeneity- of experiences and understandings of the environment
is forced into a sieve of scientific evaluation, buttressed and legitimated
by state authority; and funneled into a relatively homogenized notion
of the world, one that better reflects the prevailing current ideology
w hile not steering too far from nonhuman w orlds, the backbone of
our collective existence. The relative elasticity in the range of possible
physical practices and plausible interpretations (ideologies) lies in the
outcomes of the interplay between people-environment relations and
relations of domination. This thesis and research agenda might find
much disagreement among the disparate critical and leftist approaches
to soil degradation. However, perhaps this manner of summarizing the
problem of soil degradation could be useful at least in countering the
recurring facile blame on people with the least power or diversionary
forays into insufficient market access, private property security, and
other explanations that take capitalist social relations as universal or
desirable.

Ecology as if the Nonhuman Existed

Leftist objectives must expand beyond the critique or uncritical (if
not poorly informed) use of knowledge about biophysical processes.
Generally, a tendency for an equipollence of society and nature and
disproportionate attention to social relations has resulted in tenuous
or overly abstract theorization about environmental degradation and
this can undermine both theorization and political strategy. To con-
cur with Ariel Salleh, there needs to be "a materialist analysis of social
relations, as well as a materialism that engages with ecological pro-
cesses" (Salleh 2010, 205). However, the latter simply cannot develop
by continuing to concentrate overwhelmingly on social relations and
to narrate a story of society on one side and generic nature on the
other. There is no interaction between society and nature, if one really
takes seriously the perspective that society is part of nature. Like-
wise, there is no interaction between society and the rest of nature,
only aspects of it and in specific contexts or configurations, and so
they must be studied accordingly. Abstractions like ecology, environ-
ment, and nature are impediments to both theory and practice when
devoid of concreteness and specificity and especially when divorced
from the practice of producing knowledge about the rest of nature.
Studying soils by treating differentiated human action as one among

Eco-Social Approach to Degradation

175

0 ther factors"" is one way to overcome these recurring weaknesses on
t hc left. Studying soils is an enormity in itself, yet much more feasi-
ble a project than pretending to cover the entirety of some abstract
nature. It is more appropriate to speak of some people in particular
c0 ntexts interacting with some nonhuman processes ( soils, but never
really in their entirety), leading to mutually changing effects.

This need not lead to losing oneself in a morass of details. As Joel
Kovel (2003b, 134) has succinctly put it:

Any given ecosystemic problem requires close attention, often along scien-
tific lines, to the peculiar pathways according to w hich it unfolds and can be
resolved. But the ecological crisis is a function of the whole: of the entire
set of such crises, of why they are growing explosively under present circum-
stances, of what drives them forward, and of w hat can be done to overcome
the pressure causing disintegration of our natural foundation. "Science" can-
not answer any of these questions, and when it pretends to do so becomes
part of the problem.

And science, imbued with capitalist ideological constructs, becomes
part of the problem not only in pretending to answer questions of,
say, soil degradation, but also in generating decoys or false prob-
lems (such as population pressure or maximizing average crop yield).
Still, identifying and countering such ideology is insufficient. Left-
ists themselves must carefully study ecological change according to its
peculiarities and without losing track of the overall outcomes (the con-
figuration and interlinking of what are too often regarded as unrelated
processes, such as gender relations and soil dynamics). This implies
symmetrical significance to both in explaining and acting upon the
sort of ecological change by now likely if not already disastrous to
many people. This view ought to include an understanding of the
ecological as being far greater and more diverse than the social so that
the social causes (and understandings) of soil or environmental degra-
dation can be discerned to avoid conflating social and environmental
changes. Put another way, a change within a society (i.e., within a sin-
gle species) cannot result in predictable or overall change in the rest of
an ecosystem or the planet (much less the rest of the universe). Cap-
italist impacts on soils, such as heavy metal contamination, will likely
endure beyond a capitalist mode of production, much like past human
impacts leading to soil enrichment with OM have outlasted the modes
of production that resulted in such impacts. But the future effects of
contamination will also be contingent on myriad processes involving
microbes, vegetation, microclimates, and mineral weathering, among
other nonhuman processes. The degree of organic enrichment from

176 Ecology, Soils, and the Left

past human impacts differs according to combined nonhuman organ-
ismal, climatological, and topographical influences. That is to say,
the processes of soil formation, development, and demise are not
reducible to human intervention and neither is the rest of nature.
This should be reason enough to struggle against both the capital-
ist mode of production (with its widespread destructive eco-social
effects) and politically self-destructive, undialectical notions of future
harmony with the rest of nature (cf. Kovel 2003a, 78). The irreducibil-
ity of the nonhuman also makes it imperative for leftists to immerse
themselves in the study of biophysical processes and in the production
of knowledge that contributes to identifying and addressing the con-
crete, everyday environmental challenges that do not simply wither
away with the development of an egalitarian society.

Notes

Series Editor's Foreword

1. Just to give a brief indication of the complexity of soil properties and
Engel-Di Mauro's discussion of them, consider some of die compo-
nents of the chemical properties of soil: organic material, pH, buffering
capacity, salinity, carbonate content, amount and kinds of ions, to name
just a few, or the complex living organisms under the biological proper-
ties of soil that leads the author to say, "soils teem with life": bacteria,
fungi, protozoa, slime molds, algae, roundworms, mites, earthworms,
etc. (see Chapter 3 for full discussion).

2. Christopher Uhl. Developing Ecological Consciousness: Tfje End of Sep-
aration. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2013,
p. 206.

3. Ibid. p. 239.

Chapter i

1 . Leftist herein refers to anyone openly naming and critiquing capitalist
social relations and seeking to contribute to building an egalitarian soci-
ety. In this sense, those high on critique but not expressly anti-capitalist
and anti-authoritarian are not leftists, but they certainly are critical, so
that is what they will be called here. Admittedly, this view might irri-
tate some for being narrow or exclusionary and others for being vague
or simplistic. Greater precision would, however, require too lengthy a
diversion and too cumbersome a suite of terms to be useful for dis-
cussing the kind of subjects broached here. The reason for not using
radical rather than leftist is because radicalism does not reside within
leftist movements alone.

2. A salient example is the isolation of the antibiotic streptomycin from
the soil bacterium Streptomyces griseus. A recent study indicates that
antibiotic resistance in soil bacteria could even lead to improving the
effectiveness of pharmaceuticals (Tomasz 2006), which under capital-
ist control, is another way of disconnecting people from soils (and
one's body) by turning soils into separable compartments and into
commodities to be mined to extract new sources of profit.

3. By these terms I mean soil scientists and specialized physical geogra-
phers, agronomists, geologists, environmental scientists, and the like.

178 Notes

Chapter 2

1 . Ethnopedology combines mostly anthropology with soil science to
study how outsiders to institutional science understand and use soils
(Barrera-Bassols and Zinck 2003; Sandor and Furbee 1996).

2. This is a much wider application of the term, as "biomantle" is usually
reserved for "material sorted and brought to the surface by animals''
(Schaetzl and Anderson 2006, 242).

3. Clay is a particle size category with a diameter of less than 2 |i. Humus
refers to highly decomposed OM that is relatively stable (it cannot be
easily broken down further), sometimes for millennia.

4. These kinds of sediment alterations, however, have not been noted in
the case of other bottom-dwelling life forms, like algae. Even though
there are plenty of such organisms that live under water at greater
depths, such as ocean bottoms, the material on which they grow
provides little more than anchoring. There is no development of dif-
ferentiated layers ( horizons ) as a result of organisms' activities and
those other forces above and below the interface between the water
and the material at the bottom of the body of water. And the nutri-
ents that such plants require are mostly provided through minerals and
organisms in the surrounding water, much like a soil-less hydroponic
solution. Or, at least, none of these effects have been demonstrated
yet in the case of environments below 2.5 m of water. Perhaps this
will change in future and the extent of soil cover could reach ocean
bottoms.

5. The inclusion of organisms as one of the main factors implies that soil
scientists should resist the notion of Martian soils (that is, until life
forms are found and shown to be contributing to pedogenesis).

6. Prevailing soil-formation models oscillate between stressing either fac-
tors or processes or both. More recently, some have forwarded the
notion of evolutionary pathways, which can feature a range of possible
outcomes in soil characteristics, but this reappraisal of soil formation
retains the distinction between factors and processes in spite of the
focus on evolutionary trajectories. Still, it is a marked departure from a
steady-state or equilibrium view (Johnson and Watson-Stegner 1987;
Schaetzl and Anderson 2005, 320-342).

7. This "mobile topsoil" view is predicated on a restricted understand-
ing of parent material as original substrate. There should instead be a
source-based differentiation. Thus, one can more effectively address
the dynamism of soil formation by explaining a lack of influence
of lower-lying parent material as outcome of new parent material
additions (e.g., compounds introduced through rainwater and settling
dust), rather than a break in the relationship between lower-lying orig-
inal material and the over- lying soil. The consequence of this could
be to rethink the concepts of factors and processes along a more

Notes

179

dialectical understanding, whereby the status of factors as outcomes
or processes depends on scale of analysis.

8. This is the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the USDA.
There is also a very informative web site available on anthropogenic
soils; see http://chc.cses.vt.edu/icomanth/, accessed Januarv 21,
2009.

9. He even argues that human impact can be independent of the other
factors, a clear exaggeration, since even in the manufacturing of com-
post and topsoil, other organisms are necessary to produce OM and
the necessary resources to produce compost and topsoil (e.g., fos-
sil fuel energy, water, mineral materials) depend on often thoroughly
nonhuman processes for their existence.

10. There are also many other organisms that could be excluded on
account of their limited influence, such as almost all bird and
mammalian species.

1 1 . The authors do not even seem aware of the possibility that genet-
ics and cultural practices may be mutually constitutive. For instance,
"body weight, sickness and health, and work being done" are treated
as "initial human genotypes ,, (Amundson and Jenny 1991, 101),
which denies, just to mention one illustration, the possibility of peo-
ple's body weight being influenced by hunger imposed through low
wages or forced displacement.

12. For instance, the number of social categories within Great Plains
Indigenous Peoples is correlated with climate and soil fertility; but
the social structures of Spanish, French, and British/US colonizers
are somehow immune to such correlation and no attempt is made to
investigate historical changes in Indigenous Peoples' social categories
and the effects of relationships between different peoples.

13. But they are problematic even on their own terms. There is no pos-
sibility, for example, of discerning impacts even at the most generic
level. A plaggen soil (Anthrosol) could be the product of an urban
garden in the present as much as it could be due to OM inputs
from centuries ago. The concept of Teclmosol dissimulates differences
between cities, not all of which, for example, are industrialized. The
USDA system is an attempt to maintain existing categories with-
out formulating special ones highlighting human impact. Instead,
sub-categories are used on the basis of recognizably human-altered
horizons. However, by using this system one is forced to reproduce
virtually the same inaccuracies and false dichotomies (farming/urban,
industrial/" natural" ).

14. Among the first institutional systems was the Russian zonal (climate-
centered) soil classification, which influenced the development of
US soil taxonomy, among others, but the US system has become
increasingly an international standard rivalling that of the FAO. Pre-
ferring one over the other can be for technical reasons, since the

180

Notes

US classification system bears some limits with respect to certain broad
soil tvpes. For example, the Canadian and UK classification systems are
much more attuned to wetland soils.

15. This does not mean there is no reality outside social or human-made
reality; classifying soils or other environmental phenomena already
presumes engagement with nonhuman reality and trying to make
sense of it.

16. This process is also known as ^0116^0^'' when human -induced,
and as "ripening," when due to nonhuman causes (Gerrard 2000,
60-61, 199).

Chapter 3

1 . There are many characteristics of soil particles besides average diam-
eter. For example, they have different kinds of surface texture, such
as the degree of etching pits, scratches, and coatings. They come
in various shapes, such as different degrees of roundness, angularity,
sphericity, flatness, and other geometric properties. Measures and
indices derived from particle surface and geometry analysis can indi-
cate the prevailing type of weathering or the origins and alteration
of the material that contributed to making a soil (FitzPatrick 1993;
Ringrose-Voase and Humphreys 1994).

2. The reason for considering only these particle sizes is because it is
thought that the coarser fraction (e.g., gravel, cobbles) does not
exhibit characteristics of soil material or processes. There are also dif-
ferent ways of categorizing particles and, in fact, there are several
svstems in use. The most influential ones are those of the Interna-
tional Soil Science Society (ISSS), USDA, and the former USSR. The
differences are not trivial. What is gravel or clay in the US could be
taken as stones or fine silt respectively in Russia. If one is describ-
ing fine sand according to the ISSS, it could really mean coarse silt
for someone else using the USDA scheme. This further affirms the
point in Chapter 2 about the social basis of defining and describing
soils. In different social settings, there can be different ways of break-
ing down innumerable or seamless objects (like particle types or sizes)
into a few generalizations or categories and of understanding what is
and is not part of a soil.

3. Another way of saying the same thing is that if one fills a cup with
clay-size grains, there will be many more pores between those parti-
cles than if the same cup were filled with sand-size grains. The pores
between the sand-size grains will certainly be larger, but there will be
much less of them compared to the number of pores among clay-size
grains. This is because one can fit many clay-size particles in the
equivalent volume of one sand-size particle.

Notes

181

4. pH is a logarithmic scale from 0 to 14 that refers to the molar
amount of H" (technically, H 3 Q + ) in a solution. It is mea-
sured as -log[H 3 0-], where brackets denote moles (on moles,
see note 6 below, this chapter). Each unit difference represents
a ten-fold increase or decrease in moles of H*. For example,
pH4 = (10- 4 mol/L)(10 6 |imol/mol) = lOOiimol/L, while pH 5 =
10 u.mol/L. A pH of 7 is neutral. Above that value, a solution is said
to be alkaline. Below pH 7, a solution is regarded as acid. In other
words, the greater the amount of H", the lower the pH will be.

5. Ions are atoms that tend either to give electrons to other atoms
(anions, negatively charged) or to attract electrons from other atoms
(cations, positively charged). When ions are called anions, it means
they have a negative charge because they have more electrons (nega-
tively charged sub-atomic particles) than protons (positively charged
sub-atomic particles). The converse is true of cations.

6. A mole is the atomic mass of an element or compound (e.g., 1 mole
of hydrogen is 1 g; 1 mole of calcium is 40 g). For ease of calculation
(mole units can get very large), millimoles (0.001 moles) and centi-
moles (0.01 moles) are often used. Moles of charge (mol c ) refer to
ions' positive or negative charge and a mole of charge of any ion is
equivalent to a mole of charge of any other ion. The magnesium ion
(iMg 2 *), for example, has two moles of charge per mole and has twice
the moles of charge of hydrogen (H + ), which has only one mole ol
charge.

7. The main chemically reactive particles are humus, mineral clays, iron
and aluminum oxides and hydroxides, and carbonates. They come in
different shapes and sizes and specific surface areas. Importantly, they
differ in the amounts, tvpe, and distribution of charge on their sur-
faces. For example, OM can reach a CEC of 3,000 meq/kg and the
day minerals montmorillonite and illite have respectively a range of
80-150 and 10-40 meq/kg (Gerrard 2000, 42 ).

8. Water-soluble salts include but are not limited to sodium. They are
ions that, when combined, can form neutral (uncharged) molecules.
So, measuring soil salinity means the sum of charged elements or
compounds like calcium, magnesium, potassium, carbonates, and
sodium.

9. For example, there is an inherent pretense to industrialized farming
that the differing qualities of soils over the same land area can be
overcome through the use of fertilizer, liming, and other additions.

0 The authors then inexplicablv offer a functional equation only for agri-
culture and forestry: S q = qPi,$c>B4**»Nc,Bd)t. where soil W^X?
is a function of productivity (P,), structure (S c ), rooting depth (R*),
charge densitv (e d ), nutrient reserves (N c ), and soil biodiversity (B d ),
over time (t). This formula hides more than it reveals. The evalua-
tion of P, and H c are obviously going to differ according to overall

182

Notes

production objectives and economic pressures. Management and land
use decisions are not givens, as intimated through the formula.

1 1 . This process resembles the intimate link between soil science and state
institutional discourse and practices I explored in the case of Hungary
where soil scientists began regarding soils as capital during the period
of integration into Western European economic orbits, starting in the
late 1960s (Engel-Di Mauro 2006).

12. See http://www-pub.iaea.org/iaeameetings/41 1 76/International-
Conference-on-Managing-Soils-for-Food-Securit\'-and-Climate-
Change -Adaptation -and -Mitigation.

Chapter 4

1. To some extent the maximum-yield notion is the soil and agronomic
sciences' version of what some have called productivism or, in bla-
tantly U.S. -centred, modernist (stagist) terminology, "Fordism" (e.g.,
Goodman and Redclift 1991; Ilbery and Bowler 1998).

2. On the other hand, if soil scientists are intentionally using terms
like productivity according to prevailing bourgeois meanings, then
judging soils according to production efficiency and abstract (disem-
bodied, ahistorical) preferences shirts the focus of analysis from soils
to input-output ratios and the satisfaction of human wants (and the
preferences of only those that have the money to count in the mar-
ket). In the process, soils are reduced to vehicles for transfers of matter
and/or energy, with quantitative assessments of what is ironically not
in soils themselves but what flows through them. Adding concepts like
utility only exacerbates the problem (e.g., whose preference for what,
whose satisfaction and satisfaction of what?).

3. The Assessment involving a collective of 1 ,360 experts treats soils and
water systems in passing and as of secondary importance, relegated to
the status of "supporting services. "

4. ISRIC, housed in The Netherlands and known as the International
Soil Museum until 1984, was established in 1966 with UNESCO and
Dutch government support to serve as international soils information
clearing house. It largely represents the mainstream of the Interna-
tional Society of Soil Sciences (http://www.isric.org). The IIASA,
based in Austria, comprises representatives of national scientific orga-
nizations from 20 countries (mostly the upper ranks of the OECD
member states) who decide on research priorities (http://www.iiasa.
ac.at/).

5. Degraded land was deemed 1,965 million out of a total of
4,833 million hectares of farmland (305 million hectares irre-
versibly damaged, relative to agricultural purposes). According to
the study, water and wind erosion, chemical deterioration (e.g., salt
and pollutant accumulation, acidification), and physical degradation

Notes

183

(e.g., compaction) respectively affected 1,643, 239, and 83 million
hectares.

6. See also http://w\\Av.isric.org/projects/global-assessment-human-
induced-soil-degradation-glasod. Lindert (2000) critiques GLASOD
for providing overall diachronic figures (1945-1990) without there
ever having been a prior global assessment. In this, however, he is
mistaken (Bot, Nachtergaele, and Young 2000; FAO 1979 ).

7. http://www.isric.org/projects/land-degradation-assessment-
drylands-glada.

8. Irritatingly enough for a geographer is the use of the Mercator
projection, which distorts area in proportion to distance from the
equator. The authors' justifying the use of the projection as giving
"the least distortion of the continents" ( Oldeman and van Lynden
1996, 5) does not inspire much confidence about competence. Given
the contested nature of the Mercator projection within the UN
(Monmonier 2004 ), the authors' selected projection is even less self-
flattering. With the HWSD, it is possible to display information with
more appropriate projections.

9. There are, among others, the Soil and Terrain Database (SOTER)
Programme, concurrent with and the next stage of GLASOD, the
World Inventory of Soil Emission Potentials (WISE), and the above-
mentioned HWSD.

10. http://www.fao.org/globalsoilparmership.

1 1 . http:/ / ^-wisric.org/projects/land-degradation-assessment-drylan
ds-glada.

12. ht^://u^-\v.fao.org/nr/lada/index.phproption=com_content&:
view=article&dd= 1 75 &lang=en&Itemid= 126.

13. htm://www.thegef.org/gef/node/ 3945.

14. It is sometimes unclear if it is only about human life, as the authors are
not consistent on the issue (see Oldeman, Hakkeling, and Sombroek
1990,7).

1 5 . http:// www. worldwatch.org/taxonomy/term/75 1 , http://ww^v.
worldwatch . org/node /5 8 2 0 .

16. The organization, with no supporting evidence, claims half the
world's topsoil has disappeared over the past century and a half; see
http://worldwildlife.org/tlireats/soil-erosion-and-degradation.

17. http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu/themes.hmil.

1 8 . htm:// www.fao.org/nr/land/degradation/global/en/.

19. Figures are herein converted from figures in t ha" 1 , assuming bulk
density of 1 .3 t m -3 . This yields an equivalence of 13 t ha -1 per mm of
soil loss.

20. For example, movement of material from polluted soils (e.g., as mine
spoil ), for example, can lead to chemical degradation downslope.

2 1 . littp://w\\ r w.ars.usda.gov/Research/docs.htm. :! docid=5971 .

22. Montgomery also implicitly underestimates catastrophic events caus-
ing accelerated erosion and magnifying human impact, such as

184

Notes

earthquake-generated landslides, which can remove entire soils (lifc c
mining and quarrying, which should be also viewed as human-induced
catastrophes of industrialized capitalist societies). The average or
median geological erosion rates are over millions of years. Extreme
events may be diluted over long time intervals than in the case of farm-
ing, which ranges over thousands, not millions of years. It is possible
that during intervals of several thousands of years in geological epochs
prior even to human existence, global average soil erosion rates may
have been similar or even higher. However, periods of relatively high
erosion rates would be masked by the averaging of figures over mil-
lions of years. For more appropriate comparisons, one should ascertain
the geological erosion peaks at millennial intervals and account for cat-
aclysmic events to make the data comparable to the thousands of vears
since agriculture first emerged. Given available data, it is premature
to state that agriculture promotes higher erosion rates comparable to
those occurring in steep slopes (alpine erosion rates).

23. Net Degradation = ( Natural Degradation + Human Induced Degra-
dation) - (Natural Recovery + Human Improvement).

24. Lai's model is as follows: S r = S a + f*(Sn- Sd+lm)dt, where S r is soil
resilience, S a is antecedent soil conditions, S n is new soil formation, S d
is the rate of soil degradation, and I m stands for anthropogenic inputs
external to the ecosystem.

25. This is the equation I = PAT that was developed out of the work of
Ehrlich and Holdren in the early 1970s (York, Rosa, and Dietz 2003),
where I = environmental impact, P = population, A = per capita afflu-
ence, and T = impact per unit of technology. Paraphrasing Hynes,
the formula can be rewritten as I = C-PAT and the terms redefined
as P = patriarchy, A = global resource consumption resulting from
relations of domination, and T = environmentally damaging uses of
technology, with C representing ecologically constructive impacts
(similar to Blaikie and Brookfield's "Human Improvement").

26. If a community is characterized by oppressive relations of power and
resources are distributed in a highly unequal manner, then, just as in
the case of any political endeavor, one needs to find out why and,
on the basis of that knowledge, decide what to do to contribute to
making for an egalitarian set of relations. To state the obvious, there
are no predetermined ways of intervening to change society.

Chapter 5

1. Field experiments are one way in which soil scientists combine use
and the more distancing lab study of soils, for instance, but farmers,
too, study soils (as evident, e.g., in their classification systems) while at
the same time, unlike the vast majority of soil scientists, they depend
on soils for their livelihoods. The circumstances and aims differ (and

Notes

185

consequently so does the sort of knowledge produced), but thev are
all studying soils and systematizing the knowledge they produce out
of their interactions with soils. As Stocking (2003, 1358) observes,
"Farmers may often make better decisions than the 'experts,' not
because of any greater analytical skills, but because of the experi-
ence gained in integrating a vast array of local factors responsible for
controlling production."

2. Thus, as in a cycle of recycling cliches, we regress to a moralistic story
of people getting uncontrollably salacious upon having more food
available, over-copulating (apparently few know about birth control),
then seeking to produce more food on less land to overcome the out-
come of their sexual urges, leading to bad land use and eventually to
the demise of the species.

3. Milpas are systems of community integration that involve often highlv
biodiverse intercropping, cycles of cultivation and fallow, and some-
times permanent forest clearings. The socially integrative aspects and
the sometimes militarized encroachments forcing peasants into forests
are usually lost to soil scientists, who resort to populationist arguments
to explain deforestation.

4. For example, the nutrient data exclude non-commercial inputs and
urban farming.

Arguments pointing to demographic expansion as driving human-
induced soil degradation in antiquity are also predicated on misin-
terpretation of archaeological evidence. This is clear from the example
of wild discrepancies between estimates on ancient Maya demograph-
ics. To Montgomery (2007a, 74), the Maya population grew to three
to six million by 800 C.E., then declined never to recover again to
such numbers. According to Sharer (2009, 514), it reached tens of
millions. This discrepancy is due to scant research on the majority
of ancient Mayan peoples, the "commoners/ 1 in addition to sig-
nificant uncertainties traceable to the unevenness of archaeological
records (housing structures, pottery shards, and other remains) and
the questionable assumptions made about population dynamics, such
as cross-generational family size homogeneity. For these reasons alone,
population estimates should be considered context-specific (Sharer
2006, 97, 685-690), not comparable across continents.

6. http://\\v\-w.eea.europa.eu/articles/urban-soil-sealing-in-europe.

7. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/
Population_and_population_change_statistics#EU-27_population_
continues_to_grow.

8. Livestock and forestry are sometimes called into question, too, but
usually it is cropping systems that are usually considered the main cul-
prits, with other kinds of food provisioning systems (e.g., gathering)
simply ignored.

9. See http://monthlyreview.org/author/fredmagdoff.

186

Notes

10. Much of the study is based on data from the Calhoun experimental
forest (South Carolina, US), established in 1947.

Chapter 6

1. http://\\'\\ r \v.marxists.org/subject/dialectics/marx-engels/anti-
durhing.htm.

2 . Some also have a different understanding of ecology, which is often
conflated with nature or environment. To the archaeologist Sharer
for example, ecology refers "to the relationships between societies and
their environments" (Sharer 2009, 39). Apparently, some are unaware
that the human species is but one among millions (Mora et al. 2011).
It is not that a single definition of ecology should exist, but that claims
about addressing nonhuman processes should at the very least study
subjects that are not confined to social relations. Otherwise, it would
be less deceptive to call such studies for what they are, studies of social
relations and no more.

3. This is only made worse by focusing on a controversial hypothe-
sis proposed by a single researcher, Ruddiman, according to whom
long-term climate change has been shortened by human-induced C0 2
emissions. Rather than raise the credibility of an argument about soci-
ety and climate change, selecting the more convenient hypothesis,
without addressing alternative hypotheses, only debilitates it.

4. The issue also became a matter of soil erosion, rather than hindrance
to irrigation systems (Bennett 1939, 916-920).

5. Since the introduction and diffusion of synthetic fertilizer and indus-
trialized liming, the problem is even more of nutrient overload. It is
anachronistic to insist on soil depletion, as Foster does, rather than
landscapes depleted, or, rather, gouged by rock phosphate and potas-
sium mining and natural gas drilling (to produce nitrogen fertilizers).
But there is more to this than anachronism. Metabolic rift fails to
distinguish between soil phosphate depletion and enrichment, since
the process is treated as if it did not matter ecologically where those
processes are occurring. For instance, even if one were to accept phos-
phate enrichment as the waste side of metabolic rift (due to phosphate
mining ), it is debatable whether a balance of nutrient flows is generally
interrupted by capitalist farming. The matter is context-dependent.
For instance, ecosvstems on phosphate-poor soils can benefit from
such additions, provided phosphate is plant available.

6. In admittedly weak defense, one could surmise that there are different
rifting rates (Salleh 2010, 206). A capitalist metabolic rift is there-
fore much greater, if not fatal, compared to one from a tributary and
slavery- based system like the Roman Empire. However, this line of
reasoning does not allow r for past rifts to be constitutive of subse-
quent ecological dynamics because rifts are taken as phenomena to be

Notes

187

repaired, not as processes of ecological change. Regardless, the error
of presuming homoeostasis remains unaffected by this.

7. Moore's use of Geological fix" (Moore 2010a, 3, 5 ) to explain capital
expansion also makes a bit of a mockery of David Harvey's concept
of spatial fix, which results from social struggles, rather than social
"exhaustion."

8. Meggers' argument is misplaced regardless, unless one pretends, for
example, that people living in Amazonia in antiquity had already
invented chainsaws, explosives, mining machinery, and were involved
in intense, high-volume, profit-oriented trade.

9. See http://ww-\v.fao.org/nr/land/soils/digital-soil-map-of-the-
world/en/.

10. See http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodits'/lime/mcs-
2012-lime.pdf.

11. As depletion and exhaustion are used interchangeably by most to
mean the loss of nutrients or soil fertility, the two concepts are treated
in the same manner here.

12. See an excerpt of his intervention at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the
American Agronomy, Crop Science, and Soil Science, https://www.
agronomy.org/news-media/releases/201 3 /l 0 14/61 0/.

13. To turn clayey into sandy texture implies the introduction of sand
or some other process that changes overall particle size distribution.
Perhaps, unbeknownst to soil scientists, grasses have discovered the
means to transport large piles of sand and mixing them into soils so as
to conquer forests, which, incidentally, can also thrive on sandy soils,
depending on the tree species and the rest of the soil properties and
processes thoroughly ignored by Latour.

14. One could also ask whether the researcher is even a possibility in
actor- networks. If a researcher exists on a par with the cells (or sub-
atomic particles) that comprise that researcher, it might also make for
a horrific end to the researcher if the cells decide to split (but why
do they not, if they have the same degree of agency?). In the des-
perate quest to end the nature-society split, actor-network theorists
seems to have forgotten to check their own roles in the networks they
construe.

Chapter 7

1 . This could even be phrased as starting from but going beyond Marx
( 1845, 149; 1867, 174) in recognizing the biophysical basis of society
and studying it as well.

2. Dichotomous here means that people and the rest of nature are viewed
as split. Dualistic refers to treating society and nature not only as sep-
arate (dichotomized) but also as in a relationship of superiority or
inferiority to each other (xMerchant 1980; Plumwood 1993).

Notes

Even where some claim "second nature" prevails, human impact is
only one part of many processes. For example, manufactured soils
involve nonhuman processes, such as microbial activities and the out-
comes of biophysical processes in the composition, availability, size, and
distribution of mineral particles.

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Zemlyanitskiy, L. T. 1963. "Characteristics of the Soils in the Cities." Soviet
Soil Science 5: 468-475.

Zimmerer, K. 1993. "Soil Erosion and Labor Shortages in the Andes with
Special Reference to Bolivia, 1953-1991: Implications for 'Conservation-
with-Development. , " World Development 21 (10): 1659-1675.

. 1994. "Local Soil Knowledge: Answering Basic Questions in Highland

Bolivia." Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 49: 30-34.

. 2000. "The Reworking of Conservation Geographies: Nonequilibrium

Landscapes and Nature -Society Hybrids." Annals of the Association of
American Geographies 90 (2): 356-369.

Zimmerer, K., and T. J. Bassett, 2003. Political Ecology: An Integrative
Approach to Geography and Environment-Development Studies. New York:
The Guilford Press.

Bibliography

223

Zimmerer, K., and K. R. Young, eds. 1998. Nature's Geography. New Lessons
for Conservation in Developing Countries. Madison: The L^niversity of
Wisconsin Press.

Zobeck, T. M., and W. F. Schillinger, eds. 2010. Sail and Water Conser-
vation Advances in the United States. Madison: Soil Science Society of
America.

Index

Note: The letter 'fin' following locators refers to foot notes

acidification, 47, 51-2, 60, 67, 81,

103, 144-5, 151, 166-7
acidity, 41, 47, 156
actor-network, 133, 160-2, 168,

172, 187 (fn. 14)
AEC, see anions
afforestation, see forest
Africa, 16, 86, 104, 106, 128, 150,
155, 161
East, 110
North, 152
Southern, 126
Sub-Saharan, 107
West, 103
Agenda, 21, 118
agriculture

capitalist, 25, 33, 45, 51, 79, 86,
94, 113-15, 118, 140, 186
(fn. 5)

conservation, 79, 83, 105
conventional, 26, 50, 70,

78-9, 83
industrialized, 9, 27, 51-2, 57,

60, 117, 126, 133, 140, 181

(m.9)

in general, 26, 30, 48, 67, 71,
82-3,86-7,97, 99, 102,
110-12, 123, 127, 150,
155-7, 184 (fn. 22)

milpa, 107

organic, 50, 57, 70, 118-19
subsistence, 69, 103^i, 125
urban, 119, 185 (fh. 4)

see also fertility; plantation; soil
exhaustion
agroecology, 115, 119, 131
agroforestry, 57, 69
alienation, 2-4, 114
alkalinity, 41-4, 145, 181 (fn. 4)
aluminum, 38, 40-1, 43, 74, 156,

181 (fii. 7)
Amazonia, 97, 143, 150, 160, 187

(fn. 8)

anarchism, 137, 142-3, 164
anions, 42, 181 (fn. 5)
anion exchange capacity, see anions
Anthropocene, 28-9
Anthrosol, 24, 28, 30-1, 179

(fn. 13)
ants, 170-1
arthropods, 37

Australia, 16, 82, 104, 121, 159

balance (of nature), see homeostasis
beaver ( Castor canadensis), 23
biodiversity, 22, 37, 41, 44, 60, 64,

78,89, 181 (fn. 10), 185 (fn. 3)
biomass, 37, 46-7, 65, 70-2, 77-8,

93, 113
biosolids, 55-6
Bolivia, 103, 126
Brazil, 16, 150, 152, 156-7
buffering capacity, 40, 42-5, 67,

145, 159
bulk density, 38-9, 43, 45, 68, 74,

183 (fn. 19)

226

Index

Calhoun experimental forest, 186
(fn. 10)

California, 19,49-51, 113, 133
Canada, 16

capital accumulation, 9, 32, 53-6,

61,80,100,117
capitalism, see capitalist mode of

production
capitalist ideology, 30, 55, 61,

69-73, 78-9, 89, 97-122, 132,

144, 175
capitalist mode of production,

1-12, 15, 18,25,45,48,72,

91,94, 115-17, 124, 134-62,

172-6
carbon

dioxide, 38, 40, 45, 63, 132, 136,

186 (fh. 3)
as element, 38, 40-1, 56, 97
organic, 37, 74
see also commodity,
commodification
carbonates, 21, 24, 38, 40, 43-4,

50, 181 (fh. 7,8)
catastrophe

as extreme event, 23, 83, 89, 97,
106, 154, 173, 184
(fn. 22)
quiet (as subtle process), 3-5
catastrophism, see civilizationism
cations, 40-2,44, 133, 145, 181
(fn. 5)

cation exchange capacity, see cations
CEC, see cations
Chimbu, 93
China, 82,97, 151
civilizationism, 4, 11, 101-2, 111,

121, 132-3, 143
class relations, 5, 79, 90, 117, 120,

127, 129, 146-7, 156
clay-humus complex, 19, 35, 42
clay minerals, 24, 27, 39^0, 42, 50,

55, 63, 66, 68, 74, 83, 107,

153, 156, 158, 160, 162, 178

(fn. 3), 180 (fh. 2,3), 181
(fn. 7), 187 (fn. 13)
climate

as soil -forming factor, 23, 28, 31,

36,47, 72, 158
change, 27, 29,40-1,53,64,
133-6, 141, 147, 152, 157,
160, 169, 186 (fn. 3)
C0 2 , see carbon, dioxide
colonialism, 16-17, 26, 29-30, 51,
61, 86, 89,98-9, 101-5,
113-15, 121, 126-9, 140, 146,
150, 161, 173, 179 (fn. 12)
colonizer perspective, see colonialism
color (soil), 38,43
commodity

commodification, 54-6, 88, 177

(fa. 2)
frontier, 146-8, 157
ecological, 55-6
production, 71, 164
compaction, 25, 39, 65, 68, 97-8,

117, 140, 153
coniferous forest, see forest
conservation, 15-16, 26, 32, 61, 80,
83, 85-7, 89-90, 93, 97,
100-1, 104, 109, 112, 117-18,
125-6, 128
consistency (soil), 39
contamination, 5-10, 41, 56, 60,

65, 151, 154, 175
Coon Creek (Wisconsin, US), 97
critical perspectives, 10, 107, 116,
124-6, 129-32, 154, 163, 174,
177 (fn. 1)
crop yield, 94, 154
Cuba, 119

Dazhai (China), 97

deforestation, see forest

Delmarva Peninsula (US), 46

determinism

demographic, 101, 106
environmental, 132, 143,
167-9

Index

227

genetic, 171

social, 140
dialectics, 100, 131-2, 136-43, 147,

164, 166-7
Diggers, 123-4
dirt (in referring to soil), 2
disaster, see catastrophe

earthworms, 23, 25, 28, 30, 37,

45, 141
East Africa, see Africa
Easter Island, see Rapa Xui
ecofeminism, 127, 132
ecological commodity, see

commodity
ecological function, see ecosystem,

functions
eco-Marxism, 88, 109,
136-42, 149
see also Marxism
ecosocialism, 131, 135
ecosystem
aquatic, 67
boundaries, 49
change, 153, 155
functions, 22, 38, 46-7, 53-4,
57, 64-5, 70, 72, 93,
145, 158
interconnectivity, 50
model of historical change, 155
services, 53-6, 76, 78, 80
and society, 9, 78, 89-90, 135,
138, 144, 148, 157, 163,
165-6

and soil, 3,26, 32,38,41,

46-50, 65-7, 71
soil, 27, 37-8
environmental degradation, 5, 8, 10,
12, 55, 61,95, 124, 131-4,
137, 142-1, 148, 151-2, 163,
167, 169, 172-5
environmental impact assessment,
7-8

environmental history, 13, 126, 128,
135-6, 151

erodibility, 66, 81, 84, 86, 152-3
erosion, 65-6, 80-9, 112, 126,

129, 151
erosivity, 66, 81, 84, 86, 117
Estuary Park ( Oakland, California,

US), 19

ethnopedology, 13-15, 17, 61, 116,

178 (fh. i)
Eurocentrism, 17, 101, 104, 106,

108, 147
Europe

central and eastern, 120

in general, 83, 98, 104, 108,

147, 156
invasions (of Europeans), 16,

121,128-9
southern, 82
western, 15, 35, 94, 182
(fn. 11)

European Union, 46, 81, 108-9,
116-17

experimental stations, 73-4, 84, 89,
112, 128, 164, 184 (fh. 1), 186
(fn. 10)

famine, 97, 105, 155
FAO

populationism, 107
soil classification, 24, 28, 31, 179
(fn. 14)

soil degradation monitoring, 76,

78,81, 105, 110
soil mapping, 74-5, 150
and ecosystem services, 53

farming, see agriculture

ferri crete, 161

fertility (soil), 23-i, 39, 40, 42,
45-6, 83, 86, 103, 114, 120,
127, 129, 139, 154-6, 179
(fn. 12), 187 (fn. 11)

fertilizer, 50-1, 60, 67, 81, 145,
151, 154-5, 159, 166, 181
(fn. 9), 186 (fn. 5)

field experiments, see experimental
stations

228

Index

229

Food and Agriculture Organization,

see FAO
forest

afforestation/reforestation, 82 ,

148, 157
coniferous, 49, 51, 166
deforestation, 25, 88, 97, 103,
107, 109-10, 129, 150,
152-3, 157, 159, 185 (fn. 3)
ecosystem, 66, 148
rainforest, 3, 37, 71, 150
soil, 15, 45
temperate, 37
fragipans, see plinthite
functional-factorial model (of soil

formation), 22-3
fungi, 37,41,47

Gambia, The, 92-3, 127
gathering- hunting, 27, 45, 48, 50,

57, 71, 78, 124, 185 (fh. 8)
GEF, 76-8, 130

gender relations, 110, 114, 120,

125, 127-8, 150
Germany, 106
GLAD A, 77-80
GLADIS, 78-80

GLASOD, 74-6, 78-80, 88, 107
Global Assessment of Land

Degradation and Improvement,

see GLADA
Global Assessment of Soil

Degradation, see GLASOD
Global Environmental Facility;

see GEF
Global Land Degradation

Information System, see

GLADIS
Global Soil Partnership, 76

see also FAO
govern men tali ty, 17
grassland, 45, 49, 160
gravel, 55, 180 (fh. 2)
Great Plains (North America),

16-17, 29, 179 (fh. 12)

Haiti, 98-9

Harmonized World Soil Database,

see HWSD
heavy metals, 5-7, 25, 30, 41-3, 56,

60, 63^, 81, 141, 154
homeostasis, 24, 72, 142-6
humus, 21-3, 40, 42,67, 178

(fn. 3), 181 (fn. 7)
Hungary, 103, 106, 127
hunting-gathering, see

gathering-hunting
HWSD, 74, 80, 183 (fn. 8)
hydric soils, see wetland soils

HASA, 74, 182 (m. 4)
India, 104-6, 139
intercropping, see polyculture
International Institute for Applied

Systems Analysis, see 1 1 ASA
International Soil Reference and

Information Centre, see ISRIC
iron, 21, 38, 40, 43, 50, 63, 157,

161, 181 (m. 7)
ISRIC, 74, 182 (fh.4)
Italy, 94, 104

lamaica, 153

Keita (Niger), 97

knowledge

indigenous, 16, 112, 116
local, 14-15, 18,94,99, 116
power, 17

production of, 8, 10, 13-15, 32,

47,62,99,127-8,

132-3, 165
scientific, 7, 14-18, 33-5, 63, 90,

115, 131, 160-2, 165, 175

LADA, 76, 78

land degradation, 61, 76-8, 107
Land Degradation Assessment in

Drvlands, see LADA
land use, 7-10, 28, 46-53, 57, 62,
69-70, 74, 76, 79-80, 83^,
91,97, 106, 108, 110-14, 116,

118, 121, 127, 134, 144,
147-8, 150, 152, 156, 166,
182 (fn. 10), 185 (fn. 2)

Lesotho, 127

Liberia, 127

local knowledge, see knowledge
loess, 97, 157

Machakos (Kenya), 103, 106
macronutrients, see nutrients
managerialism, 101, 110-15, 120,

128, 130
Mandinka, 93
manoomin, 48

manure, 50-1, 64, 67, 139, 159
mapping, 74, 76-9, 79, 81, 108

see also FAO
marginal land, 153^1
Martian soils, 18, 22, 178 (fh. 5)
Marxism, 3-i, 11, 88, 115, 124,
126, 131, 133, 135^2, 149,
160, 164, 167, 170-1, 187
(fn. 1)
see also eco- Marxism
Maya, 102, 107
metabolic rift, 136-8, 141-2,
144-5, 186 (fn. 5, 6)
see also eco-Marxism
Mexico, 113

microbes, see micro-organisms
micronutrients, see nutrients
micro-organisms, 9, 22-3, 37-9,

41-2, 45, 64, 67, 132-3, 148,

175, 188 (fh. 3)
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment,

54, 73
Mineralization, 38
mismanagement, see managerialism

nature, 4-5, 15, 24-5, 30, 55, 72,
78-80, 131-3, 135-9, 142,
147-9, 167-72, 174-6
see also capitalist ideology
nematodes, 27, 37, 156
Net Degradation model, 90, 126
neutrality, see objectivity

Niger, 97

nitrogen, 23, 38, 40-1, 45, 67, 145,
151, 156, 158-9, 166, 186
(fn. 5)
nutrients

accumulation, 50, 84, 140, 154,

186 (fn. 5)

availabilitv, 5, 45-6, 63, 71, 77,
98, 107, 143-4, 154-5,
158, 161

balance, 128, 139, 153, 186
(fn. 5)

cycling, 23, 38-±3, 50, 54, 63,
65,74, 86, 112, 128-9, 139,
144-5, 158, 178 (fn. 4), 186
(fn. 5)

data, 185 (fn. 4)

losses, 66, 107, 156-8, 159-60,

187 (fn. 11)
macronutrient, 22, 156, 159
micronutrients, 159
replenishment, 67, 154, 160
storage, 15, 38-±3, 67, 160, 181

(fh. 10)
synthetic, 25

see also agriculture; fertility (soil);
fertilizer; soil exhaustion

objectivitv, 31, 52-3, 62, 92, 94-5,

171,175
see also capitalist ideology
Ojibwa, 147
OM, see organic matter
organic matter, 9, 18, 22-5, 37, 60,

81, 159, 175, 178 (fn. 2), 179

(fn. 9, 13), 181 (fn. 7)
Ouachita Mountains (L T S), 82

Papua New Guinea, 93

parent material, 23-5, 28, 31, 36,

140, 178 (fn. 7)
particle size, 18, 39, 74, 178 (fn. 3),

180 (fh. 2), 187 (fn. 13), 188

(fn. 3)
see also texture
pastoralism, 127

230

Index

patriarchy, 2, 92, 103, 110, 127,

150, 184 (fn. 25)
peak soil, 87-90
People, Land xYlanagement, and

Environmental Change, see

PLEC
permeability, 38-9
pH, 40-5, 47, 49-51, 63-4, 68, 81,

107, 120, 129, 145, 153, 156,

181 (fn. 4)
see also acidification; acidity;

alkalinity; buffering capacity;
cation exchange capacity;
fertility
phosphates, see phosphorus
phosphorus, 40-1, 43, 50-1, 63,

154, 159, 166, 186 (fh. 5)
plaggen soil, 24, 27, 173, 176

(fn. 13)
plantation, 153, 156, 166
plants, 19, 21, 23, 41, 43, 55, 64-5,

69, 109, 139, 159, 168, 178

(fn.4)
PLEC, 77, 79
plinthite, 68-9
Podzols, 49, 51
Poland, 152-3, 157
political ecology, 59, 126, 146, 172
polyculture (intercropping), 28, 71,

112-13, 185 (fn. 3)
population growth, see

populationism
populationism, 89, 103, 108-9, 129
porosity, 38^0, 45
production of knowledge, see

knowledge
productivity, 46-8, 50-1, 70-1,

73^, 79-80, 93, 104, 113,

139, 146, 151, 155-6, 158,

181 (fn. 10), 182 (fn. 2)
see also capitalist ideology

racism, 5, 11, 100, 103, 117, 121,

125-7
Radtalva (Hungary), 19

radical, 177 (fn. 1)
rainforest, see forest
Rapa Nui, 129
Regosol, 31

Revised LTniversal Soil Loss

Equation, 84
rodents, 37, 133
Roman Empire, 29, 108, 151-2,

186 (fn. 6)

Sahara Desert, 82
Sahel, 97, 113, 125
St. Lucia, 14-15
St. Vincent, 126
salinity, 40, 43-4, 74, 181
(fn. 8)

salinization, 60, 63, 67, 88, 113,
151-2

sand, 18, 39-41, 45, 55, 68, 147,
156, 160, 162, 180 (m. 2, 3),

187 (m. 13)

science, see knowledge (scientific)
sealing, 48, 109, 111, 114,

154, 166
second contradiction, 136
sediment, 18-19, 21-2, 38, 55, 60,

65,67, 82-5, 142, 144,178

(fn-4)

sedimentation, 23, 60, 66-7, 113,
152, 173

setder colonialism, see colonialism

Shawangunk Ridge, 19

Sichuan Basin, 82

silt, 39,180 (fh. 2)

slope, 66, 184 (fh. 22)
angle, 64, 66,85,93, 103
aspect (cardinal orientation), 23
geometry, 23, 66, 85, 88
length, 23, 66
processes, 82,84, 87,91
see also deforestation; erodibility;
erosion; terraces

socialism, 93, 119

Index

231

see also anarchism; ecofeminism;
ecosocialism; Marxism;
state-socialism
sodicity, 40, 43, 74
Soil Conservation Service (US), 104
soil exhaustion, 88, 135, 138, 148,
152, 154-60, 186 (fn. 5), 187
(fn. 11)
soil formation

factors, 22-4, 26, 28-30, 36-7,

41, 50, 58, 88, 93
processes, 21-2, 82, 93
rates, 82-3, 88, 109
soil loss tolerance, 83
soil resilience, 90, 100, 173, 184
(fn.24)

soil survey, 32, 36, 73^, i 16, 125
soil variability, 23, 76, 140-1,

149-54
Sou tli Africa, 125-6
state-socialism, 32, 53, 117-19, 126
steady-state, 24, 178 (fh. 6)
structure (soil), 38-9, 41, 43-5,

65-6, 68, 129, 133, 181

(fn. 10)

subaqueous soils, see wetland soils
submerged soils, see wedand soils
Sub-Saharan .Africa, see Africa
sustainable agriculture, see

agriculture (conservation)
Syria, 97

Technosol, 28, 30, 80, 179 (fn. 13)
Tecumseh rebellion, 147
termites, 23
terraces, 24-5, 66, 88
terra preta, 24-5, 98, 173
texture

T factor, see soil loss tolerance
Thailand, 103
threshold, 24, 44, 64, 135
topography, 23, 28, 36-7, 76,
139, 176
see also slope

topsoil, 23-5, 55-6, 60, 66, 68, 82,
85, 139, 178 (fn. 7), 179
(fn. 9), 183 (fn. 16)

tropical soils, 57, 111-12,
150-2, 155

UNEP, 54, 75-6, 78

L T nion of Socialist Geographers, 125

United Kingdom (UK), 108, 117,

180 (fn. 14)
United Nations Environmental

Program, see UNEP
United States, 16, 19, 33, 104,

113, 121
Linked States Department of

Agriculture, see US DA
Universal Soil Loss Equation, see

Revised LTniversal Soil Loss

Equation
urban agriculture, see agriculture
urbanization, 111

USDA, 19, 49, 51, 74, 81, 87, 102,
114, 120, 179 (fn. 8, 13), 180
(fn.2)

USSR, 113, 119

utility, 70, 182 (fh. 2)

water

availability, 3, 6, 41, 54, 78
conservation, 15-16,

97, 128
contamination, 6-7, 33, 42-3,

60, 63-4
cycling, 5, 22, 39, 145,

163, 167
erosion, 39, 66, 75, 81, 83, 85,

182 (fn. 5)
flow, 5, 22, 25, 39-43, 54, 63-5,

68-9, 161
storage, 39, 41, 45, 65-7, 74, 77,

83, 159
table, 9, 43, 92
withdrawal, 6, 50-1, 113,

147, 153
see also contamination; erosion;

nutrients

232

Index

West Africa, see Africa
Western Europe, see Europe
wetland soils, 20, 23, 32-3, 49, 51,

54-5,57, 65, 128, 147, 180

(ft. 14)

wild rice {Zizania palustris), see
manooniin

wind, 8, 39, 60, 65-6, 72, 75, 81,
84-5, 182 (fn. 5)
see also erosion
world-systems theory, 109-10, 126,
143-4, 146-8, 155-8

Zimbabwe, 127

"Ecology, Soils, and the Left is a quite unusual and much-needed work that makes crucial
contributions to current debates in political ecology. While Engel-Di Mauro presents a
brilliant dissection of pseudo-dialectical leftist ecologies, his central focus is on the positive
task of guiding the left toward a very specific analysis grounded in the materiality of social,
natural, and historical realities. He thus makes a major contribution to giving concrete
content to concepts such as 'ecosocialism' and 'left ecology.'"

—John Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Loyola New Orleans, U

Conventional explanations about soils and their degradation contain fundamental flaws.
In standard approaches, social relations of domination are mystified, while much leftist
theorization falters by disregarding soil dynamics. Soil degradation is both an occurring
process and a political construct; therefore, it must be addressed as both a biophysical and
social process. By developing and applying an ecosocial perspective, this volume improves on
soil science and leftist approaches to environmental degradation to develop an understanding
of environmental degradation that counters prevailing tendencies for decontextualization or
reductionism.

Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro is an Associate Professor of Geography at SUNY New Paltz, USA,
where he works, presents, and writes on soil degradation. He received a MSc degree at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, in Physical Geography specializing in soils, and a PhD
in Geography at Rutgers University, USA (2000), focusing on the impact of social processes
on soil use and quality.

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